Five-Dollar Circus
by analect
Summary: When the Syndicate brings the fight to her door, Iggy Abaroa wants more than just revenge. She's going to take Steelport to pieces… but the Boss knows she can't win without making a few unlikely alliances. She just never bet on quite how unlikely one such pact would turn out to be. (Fem!Boss/Matt Miller set during and after SRTT; mild AU for Matt joining the Saints.)
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N:** Oh, shit. I tripped and fell and started writing Saints Row fanfic._

_This is nothing huge – just your average "mostly follows the game with a few tweaks and a slightly shifted timeline" fic – but it's a step outside the box for me. My usual gaming poison is fantasy RPGs, and until now I've only written fanfic for Dragon Age, so... bear with me, I guess? (Also, if you're a person who follows me on here for DA-related reasons: hello! Sorry.)_

_Expect a lot of violence, blood, drugs, awful language, criminal activity, and infrequent bare nekkidness. Also please be aware that – while I have altered some aspects of the SRTT plot/narrative (mainly for slightly more physically possible and/or logical action sequences, and also for Matt getting recruited as a Saint) – Matt's still canonically 16. Not planning on including any explicit underage nookie, but it is a plot point. _

_Also, warnings for content dealing with themes of sexual violence, exploitation, trauma etc. will probably apply, but nothing extremely graphic. I love the comedic exaggeration of the game, and though I've aimed to keep things a little grittier in the fic, I've tried to do it without being *too* realistic, especially concerning psychological trauma, human trafficking, and all that other appalling stuff that Saints Row somehow manages to make into comedy._

_Thanks for reading!_

_**Disclaimer:** Not mine; don't own; no profit being made._

* * *

**1. That Sinking Feeling**

* * *

It was almost embarrassingly easy to get into the Saints' dirty laundry. The bank accounts were a piece of piss, obviously—nearly all offshore funds, buried in tax-dodging loopholes and obfuscation, but still extremely simple to trace and crack. The money-laundering operations and corporate fronts were no better hidden, and there was really very little that the Saints/Ultor Media Group had done to protect itself from prying eyes… or hackers on a mission.

It was rather amusing to watch all those long lines of numbers dwindle down to zero, and very gratifying—after bouncing the money around enough disguised locations and through enough smokescreens to make it virtually impossible to follow—to pour it neatly into the Syndicate's accounts. Mr. Loren was going to be very pleased indeed, and it had taken all of, ooh, what? Four hours' work? Maybe a bit more, including waiting for all the transfers to drip through the proxy bounces, but not _that_ much.

Matt Miller leaned back in his low-slung leather chair, basking in the bluish light and reflected glory of his monitor array. This was why they called him _Cybergod_.

Well… technically, they didn't. But they absolutely should do. He should start mentioning it to people, seeing if it took off. He should have a decent nickname, in addition to his legendary online handle. He was the leader of one of the biggest gangs in Steelport, after all. Not… well, not in terms of _numbers_, maybe, or actual physical territory. If you wandered around the city, the Luchadores and the Morningstar definitely had a more overt presence, but that was only because they lacked subtlety.

The Deckers had never been about brute strength. What was the point in all that ridiculous chest pounding anyway? Why try to show off in meatspace what could be undeniably proven online? If Matt wanted, he knew he could take every light in the city down. He could bring on eternal night. He could destroy someone's life with just a few little lines of code; erase their identity or seed their destruction inside it. He could tear the whole fucking world apart and build his own in its place. And one day, he might do just that.

In the meantime, Steelport had yielded some very interesting opportunities. The Syndicate offered his people security and, while the fiscal rewards were compelling, the respect the Deckers got—and the guarantee that the city's other major crews wouldn't automatically gun them down on sight—was _very_ worthwhile.

Yes. The arrangement worked, but only because he allowed it to. Of course.

Matt stretched his shoulders, pushed his headphones down off his ears for a moment, and glanced at the clock on the bottom of his screen. He'd been up all night. There was nothing new in that, obviously, although it _had_ been a very eventful twenty-four hours and—when the adrenaline and the combined caffeine/sugar rush from the endless amounts of Joe Cola he'd been drinking wore off—he was going to enjoy curling up in his bed and passing out. Not yet, but sometime soon.

It was still fairly early morning, though the passage of time wasn't immediately evident this deep inside the old power plant. The abandoned reactor and its attendant buildings had been the perfect place to set up shop, and he rather liked the way Burns Hill had become its own enclosed city; a whole other world of metal, rivets, and perpetual twilight, bathed in the comforting, humming glow of blue neon.

From somewhere in the metallic warrens above the old bunker buried in the plant's lower levels—Matt's personal concrete burrow, filled with his stuff and arranged just the way he liked it—grindcore could be heard, or perhaps rather felt, throbbing through the rusty walls. He knew people tended to perceive the Deckers as kids, and maybe that was true; most of them _were _young, but they were far from naïve, and just because they gravitated predominantly towards technology-based operations didn't mean they didn't know how to do anything else. They did, for example, know how to throw a party, and there was usually something of that nature going on somewhere in the plant.

Sometimes, he even joined in… although, frankly, Matt preferred to stay out of the way most of the time. He thought it best to maintain the sense of mystery that—along with his cybergodly skills and unparalleled brilliance—had lent him the authority he had within the crew in the first place. And it was totally that. Not because anyone laughed if he danced. He'd been at the centre of the Deckers—he had _been_ the Deckers—since the beginning, since before their identity had existed anywhere outside of cyberspace. He'd brought all of this into being; given them life and purpose and real, physical presence.

Anyone who muttered darkly about the rumours that Phillipe Loren was responsible for Matt's continued, and undisputed, reign over the crew could… well, they could fuck right off.

He pulled his headphones—neon blue trim and the Deckers' blue skull, _which he had designed, thank you very much_, painted on the cups—back up over his ears, and puffed a breath between his lips, blowing his spiky fringe out of his eyes. Jai Paul flowed smoothly through the headset, all good vibes and rounded beats, and Matt's fingers danced over the keyboard.

All the transfers were completed, and he'd flicked a few breadcrumbs to the IRS along the way. The Saints/Ultor group, and in particular its legal division, was going to be _very_ busy in the coming months, if it survived that long.

He didn't plan on checking in with Mr. Loren yet, though. Better let him think the job had been harder than he'd actually found it, and that way Matt would get the credit he deserved. After all, if absolutely everything he did looked ridiculously simple, people might stop being impressed.

Anyway, there was no rush, was there? By now, Killbane had probably caught up with the Saints' leader and her remaining lieutenant. Mr. Loren had been extremely exacting on that point. After the incident on the plane—and Matt still wasn't sure precisely what had happened, because no one had actually said just _how_ the surviving Saints escaped, or how Loren had ended up with that cut on his forehead and the bandage across his nose—it had been made abundantly clear that no effort was to be spared in taking them down. They were not welcome, Mr. Loren had said. Negotiations had been "less than successful", whatever that meant.

Matt presumed it meant that the Third Street Saints were exactly what Mr. Loren said they were: a bunch of vulgar and degenerate gangsters with no sophistication and no sense of boundaries.

Still, their brand was rather difficult to avoid. #3rdStreet and #saints seemed to be almost permanently trending on social media—not that Matt used it, because it wasn't secure, not to mention he didn't plan on letting himself by pinpointed by any corporate profiler—and no adblocker in the world could quite expunge the energy drink commercials that had gone viral, or the numerous other corporate sponsorships that popped up all over the internet. From footwear to body spray, there didn't seem to be anything the Saints wouldn't endorse.

Just the other day, he'd seen a cardboard cutout in a grocery store in Salander that proclaimed: "Saints enjoy bustin' da caps off of Joe Cola, dawg". Ugh. It was utterly ridiculous. Rumour had it there was even a _Planet Saints_ store opening in Yearwood, which had been the last straw for Mr. Loren, although in Matt's opinion it was far from the worst of their crimes.

He wasn't sure what the Syndicate's next move was going to be. Mr. Loren seemed to be of the opinion that, once their most senior members were dead, the Saints would crumble. Their reputation would be ruined, and it would be easy to take over their operations in Stilwater. Their media empire would fade away—taking those annoying Saints Flow adverts with it, hopefully—and they would stop attracting all this unfortunate attention to what the media kept calling "the scourge of gang violence".

That was the problem. The Saints' prominence, and their eagerness to take to the spotlight, had shifted a lot of focus onto the matter of so-called "organised crime". Questions were being asked in newspapers and in the Senate, and awareness of those uncomfortable questions made people look far too closely at the Syndicate. According to Mr. Loren, _that_ was what had made the Third Street Saints the source of irritation they had become. Not their tackiness, not their insistent media presence, and not even the sheer gall they displayed in opening up one of those awful shops in Steelport… but the very fact that they courted attention the way they did.

The Saints' antics, and the inevitable attention they brought to other operations, made life awkward for the extremely wealthy and influential clients the Syndicate had. It was embarrassing for a multi-billion-dollar global conglomerate to be hassled over rumours of organised crime, arms dealing, and prostitution… particularly when all those rumours were true.

As far as Matt was concerned, his Deckers had the best of it. Their world was the shadows, the invisible corners of cyberspace. They had no _need_ to fawn over the people Mr. Loren entertained. In fact, Matt was rather glad that his employer's Morningstars handled that side of things. Let them have their Eurotrash art dealers, government attachés, and ridiculously wealthy dictators. _His_ interests were in the global revolution, and the new world that was coming. If having his people left in peace meant letting Mr. Loren believe the Deckers were his personal IT department, then Matt didn't mind playing along. For now.

He turned his music up and tapped at his keyboard, pulling up a few tabs for forums and archives, and opening a command prompt to access the program he'd written for screening email traffic. Well, he might as well make good use of the time before he called Loren to say the job was done, and he wanted to see what the latest chatter and speculation was concerning the forthcoming season opener of _Nyte Blayde_. A rumour had been going around that filming for Season 6 was going to be delayed due to Josh Birk being cast in the movie being made about the bloody Saints, much to Matt's personal indignation. _That_ was far, far worse than any media coverage those bastards might have pulled down, and worse than all the irritating commercials for ghastly drinks and ugly shoes and whatever other tat the Saints peddled combined.

Once they fucked with _Nyte Blayde_, it got personal.

To Matt's annoyance, his investigations hadn't turned up anything concrete yet. It hadn't been difficult to hack the email accounts and phones of _Nyte Blayde_'s head writers, production team, and the studio manager responsible for approving major decisions on the show—well, not difficult for _him_, obviously, because he was a cyber god and he could do anything—but it had proved frustratingly difficult to connect the information he'd mined with actual facts or events… especially when he was trying to avoid spoilers.

It wasn't that he didn't want to know what happened, but Season 5 hadn't started airing yet, and he was desperate not to ruin it for himself. Besides, it seemed to Matt that nobody in television ever said a single honest sentence; the vast majority of the calls he'd listened in to had been people massaging each other's egos and avoiding making any real commitments. He had learned that Josh Birk was holding out for a pay hike—understandably, seeing as he was a Hollywood film star now—and that the studio was wavering, worried that the rest of the cast might follow suit. He also knew the electricians' union was threatening a strike that might cause problems, and that one of the writers had been fired, though to be fair Matt had known about that already. She was a hack who didn't take her job seriously… she'd made several disparaging and sarcastic remarks about the character of Franklyn Nyte being "overblown" and "melodramatic" in private emails to her colleagues, and she'd even tried to suggest reintroducing Mindy, the notoriously annoying sidekick Nyte Blayde had almost acquired in one of the weaker episodes of Season 4.

Matt wasn't standing for that, so he'd traced her through her driver's license and arranged for a series of unpaid speeding tickets, then put together a voicemail message that made it sound like she was drunkenly accusing her boss of sexual harassment, and sent it to the man's phone. Job done.

It didn't help with the Season 6 shooting schedule, though. Matt grimaced as he flicked through the most recently intercepted emails, screening for key words and useful terms. There was still a petty argument going on about the catering firm that had been contracted, though it looked as if the shooting would be partly on location in Vancouver. There had been references to that in what he'd read for Season 5's schedules. Ooh… did that mean Nyte Blayde was finally tracking down Alex von Tess? It was implied that the Cardinal—as he had been known until the Cyprian Order fell, succumbing to the powers of The Darkness in the thrilling two-part conclusion to Season 4—had fled north, and there was hot debate as to whether von Tess, now horribly scarred and driven to the brink of insanity by the near-total destruction of the Order, would return in Season 5 and beyond, or whether his role as antagonist would pass in full to Journey Kincaid, once The Bloody Canoness, but now herself a vampire.

Matt was rather hoping for the latter—Nyte Blayde and the Canoness had been torn apart when he became a creature of the night and she sided with the Cardinal against him, but now that they shared a common bond of blood, surely it was possible that they might reunite? Naturally, there would have to be a power struggle first. Nyte Blayde could never fully love a woman who wasn't at least some way towards being his equal, and Journey was _far_ closer to that than poor, tragic Marion had ever been.

Of course, the very fact that Marion had _been_ so tragic—fated to love a man who could never return her affection after the loss of his wife—had made her death much more poignant for Nyte Blayde, not to mention endearing her to the fans to the extent that she was written back in, via dream sequences and the visions controlled by The Darkness, well after her original exit during the first season. Grief and guilt following Marion's death had crippled Franklyn for much of Season 2, as The Darkness tormented him with images of his former loves, manipulating his memories and wrenching at his sanity.

It had been very powerful viewing, but in Matt's opinion the former Bloody Canoness had always been more compelling, both as an adversary and a love interest. The idea of a Nyte Blayde/Journey arc with lots of fight scenes, complex strategic manoeuvres, and highly charged erotic undertones was… well, very interesting indeed. Matt contemplated the possibilities as he skimmed through the text scrolling across his screen, flipping from emails—nothing new there—to fan forums and fic archives. He bookmarked a couple of Canoness/Marion femslash stories for later, and sneered at the discussion threads regarding Season 6 speculation.

He wrinkled his nose, bashing out a quick but scathing reply to some complete idiot on the boards who was saying how awesome it would be to see a _Nyte Blayde/Gangstas in Space_ crossover with Johnny Gat in it. Ugh. No. That was just… _ugh_. Anyway, according to Mr. Loren, Gat was very emphatically dead—and _that_ was going to cause quite the media storm when the news broke.

Apparently, he'd been killed onboard the plane, and the Morningstar were bringing the body back to Steelport, although what they intended to do with it after that Matt didn't care to speculate. He was a little bit tempted to start seeding rumours about Gat's death online, but he knew better than that. Besides, it would be public knowledge soon enough, along with whatever was going to happen to the Saints' Boss.

During this morning's conference call—in which Matt had been instructed to clean out the Saints/Ultor accounts, and Killbane was told to find and destroy the Saints, wherever in Steelport they had landed—Mr. Loren had said something about Gat's death serving as a warning.

It meant only the Boss and the girl from that dreadful reality show were left, and Matt couldn't imagine they'd present much of a problem for Killbane. So, no more obnoxious Johnny Gat adverts all over the place—with his stupid sunglasses and his stupid hair, and his improbably chiselled chin, because it wasn't as if anybody could physically _look_ like that anyway, it was a completely unattainable ideal—and, pretty soon, no more Saints at all.

Probably.

Matt had to confess to a lingering sense of unease, and a mild worry that maybe Mr. Loren was being slightly overconfident in just assuming everything would go according to plan. After all, he'd _assumed_ the Saints would cave to the offer he'd intended to make them onboard his plane—sixty-six percent of gross income from the Stilwater operations was a steep take, but it would have been hard to refuse such a proposal, given that the alternative was supposed to have been summary execution. Well, that hadn't worked, had it? The Saints hadn't caved, and Loren hadn't managed to kill them all… but he appeared happy to delegate the cleaning up.

Matt supposed Mr. Loren's mind was probably on some of the deals the Syndicate had coming up. He'd been tasked—as usual—with making sure everything ran smoothly. There was to be a series of parties at Morningstar properties downtown: wealthy foreign investors, hedonistic plutocrats, Steelport's rich and famous… all that rubbish. Matt's job was to coordinate the technical side, ensure the buildings' grids were locked down and kept private, and that the only surveillance present was the Syndicate's own. Their clients placed a high premium on privacy, not to mention the fact that it simply wouldn't do if the military were to discover that Mr. Loren was selling the same high-tech weaponry that had been locked into "exclusive" government contracts to both foreign dealers and domestic bidders.

Pissing off the military nearly always resulted in decidedly tiresome repercussions, although Matt did enjoy playing with their toys. For some reason, they were still surprised that it was possible for "anonymous hackers" to get into their systems and use their drones to make pretty firework displays over the city, or cause the guidance computers on their tanks to mysteriously activate and drive the vehicles out of supposedly secure compounds in the middle of the night, then leave them parked outside _Technically Legal_, to be retrieved the next day by red-faced army officials.

Mr. Loren had told him to stop doing that. He said it was childish—which it absolutely _wasn't_—and that it could jeopardise the Syndicate's contracts, which Matt also didn't think was true. He'd said it just made it easier to sell "security upgrades" in addition to the original packages, but Mr. Loren had not found that amusing.

A three-note tone sounded in Matt's ear, indicating an incoming call on the Deckers' internal net, and an alert blipped on the second monitor in his array, providing the option to synch camera and voice. Unlike any kind of video call software commercially available, of course, their communications system was entirely secure. Matt could vouch for that; he'd created it himself. It was just one tiny facet of their network, and it was absolutely nothing compared to the vast glories of the Usenet—an actual cybernetic reality, _his_ reality, that held more power and potential in it than most idiots could possibly dream of.

The Decker Usenet was as far removed from what the majority of people thought of as "the internet" as… as… well, as the classic _Nyte Blayde_ comics of the '97-'99 _NyteFang _story arc were to the trashy Saints titles that Volition had been publishing recently. Hell, the Usenet made the dark web look like an 8-bit candy garden of inadequate security and crippling limitations. Its magnitude was impossible to describe to anyone who didn't fully understand the potential of integrating with technology, or the ways in which computers could be so much more than mere tools… and, very soon, Matt was going to see it all come to fruition.

He tapped his headset, syncing the call to the screen. "Kirsten?"

The image of a familiar face flickered into view: a girl less than two years older than him, her pale, rather round face framed by a roughly cut bob of bleached hair streaked with Decker blue. Her dark blue lips were curled into a very smug smile, and she winked at him.

"Clever boy," she said, her accent betraying that they shared a country of origin, though Kirsten was from Central London, and liked to tease Matt over his so-called "posh" Home Counties origins.

For years, it had been a source of constant chagrin for him to come from a nice, middle-class family in Surrey. It was extremely hard to be taken seriously as a cyber-anarchist of the new world order when you spoke properly, had never been terribly badly off for money, and had benefited from a rather good private education… at least until you ran away from boarding school.

The lack of snide observations about his background was one of the reasons Matt liked the US. His Englishness had a certain cachet over here. What used to get him picked on, called names, and more than occasionally beaten up back in Caterham, to most Americans merely said "Brit" and nothing more. It was an amazing country, really; so full of opportunities, and yet it was so easy to disappear into the cracks. Reinvent yourself. Be anyone, or anything.

"Am I? Well, I know _that_," he said, preening a bit.

Kirsten sneered good-naturedly at him. "And I fucking love how you're so modest about it. Seriously—you know you said to keep eyes on the city?"

Matt nodded. Kirsten was one of the best surveillance experts he'd ever seen: she could hack into a whole district's worth of traffic cameras and watch every single monitor at once, as long as she didn't take her ADHD meds. He'd asked her to arrange a simple dragnet on any form of closed circuit cameras in Steelport… just as a precaution. The Saints' Boss and the tart from the TV show were bound to show up somewhere sooner or later, unless Killbane had already stomped them out, so it seemed sensible to find out where they were. He figured Mr. Loren might appreciate his ingenuity.

"I found them," Kirsten said, swiping a hand across her screen, which caused an encrypted data link to swoop onto Matt's array. "Picked 'em up walking along Grant Street… you wanna see?"

"Nice one," Matt admitted, using the link to piggyback himself into the feed Kirsten had jacked. "So, Killbane hasn't caught up yet? He's _slow_."

Two of his monitors flickered, then filled with slightly blurry images of Steelport's northeastern side; a landscape of cracked concrete and chainlink fences. The timestamp was from almost two hours ago—about the time he'd finished draining the accounts and started laying false trails to hide what he'd done with the money—and he could see the biometric recognition program Kirsten had evidently used to find the Saints running in an overlay.

"What did you use for the— oh, of course. The TV show, right?"

"_I Wanna Sleep With Shaundi_," Kirsten said, disdain dripping from her voice. "Fuck's sake. Still, her face is on everything. And so's her _everything_, actually."

Matt sniggered. She had a point: Shaundi, Johnny Gat—the _late_ Johnny Gat—and Pierce Washington were the faces of the Saints, pop culture icons plastered across billboards and column inches alike. The gang's Boss didn't seem to take so much of an active role in advertising… Matt wasn't even sure he could have picked her out of a line-up, and he didn't know her name, though he imagined she was much like the others. Just another corporate sheep, poured into logo-laden clothes and grinning mindlessly for the cameras.

"Have you actually watched it?" he asked, eyeing the array for their targets. "The show, I mean?"

"Fuck, no!" Kirsten snorted. "I've got better things to do with my time than watch a bunch of idiotic meatheads trying to get into some skank's knickers. I just pulled a clip from online. It was easy to extrapolate the algorithm, match height, weight, spacing of facial features… they're coming up now on your frame. See?"

And there they were, two women stalking irritably—limping irritably, actually—through a smoggy Steelport dawn. The traffic camera image wasn't that clear, but the much-vaunted Shaundi was recognisable enough: a very slender woman with a high, tight ponytail, and skin-tight pants in the Saints' signature shade of bright purple. She looked less like she was wearing them than as if they'd actually been spray-painted onto her, and she was possibly the only person ever to survive bailing out of a crashing aircraft and still be wearing high heels.

That made the woman with her the Boss, then.

"Going to another camera," Kirsten said, as the images shifted, altering their frame and angle.

"They're looking for something," Matt observed, watching the women cross the street, heading towards a small bodega.

The Boss was around the same height as Shaundi—actually, probably taller, given she appeared to be wearing flat boots instead of heels—but much broader in build, and she wore her hair short, cropped close at the back of her neck but with a cowlick at the front, falling over one side of her forehead. It looked dark, though it was hard to see the colour… was it dyed? She wore skinny jeans and a pale sleeveless tee, displaying enough tattoos for the clientele of an entire biker bar… or so Matt assumed, because it wasn't as if he'd actually ever _been_ inside a biker bar. Her right arm was entirely covered with them, and he found himself rather curious, annoyed that the camera couldn't get closer and show him what they were meant to be.

A broad grin split over his face as he realised what the Saints must have been looking for. Of course… what was the first thing you needed if you were stranded in an unfamiliar city? He could hardly contain his cackle of delight.

"Oh my god… they were going for the ATM! Hah!"

"You'll like this," Kirsten said, clattering at her keyboard.

Matt chuckled to himself as she worked her way through the loops of code. Through their interconnected terminals—utterly seamless: the beauty of his beloved network—he could watch her navigate the security protocols, and pull up the records from the bodega's cash machine.

"Are you ready for this?" she asked. "This is what it looks like when someone discovers they've lost millions."

Matt bit down on his black-polished thumbnail and tried, at least nominally, not to actually giggle in anticipation.

"Speaking of the money," Kirsten said, "did we get it?"

"What?" He tutted at her. "No, I donated it all to a bloody orphanage. Of course we did… well, a third, anyway. Technically."

"Oh… right. Syndicate."

He could tell from her tone that she had opinions, but he wasn't about to argue. He didn't need to; _he_ was in charge here, not her. _He_ was the legendary über-hacker who'd cracked the Pentagon's mainframe in less time than it took most people to make a cup of tea (well, sort of), and _he_ was the one who sat in the penthouse boardroom meetings at the Syndicate Tower, and was in the direct confidence of Phillipe Loren. So there.

The ATM's camera feed was giving Matt an unrivalled view of Shaundi's bare midriff and ample cleavage—not an unpleasant sight, admittedly—as she stood behind the Boss, glaring thunderously around the bodega. The Boss leaned over the machine, stabbing in her PIN. Even her knuckles were tattooed, Matt realised, though he couldn't read the letters. It was funny, but she didn't look like he'd expected, inasmuch as he'd expected anything. He'd imagined she would be something like her lieutenants—slick, big on shiny clothing and ostentatious jewellery, maybe with some cleavage on show—but she wasn't. She had a strong, square sort of a face, currently set into a scowl of unadulterated fury, with badly smudged black eyeliner, and a silver ring in her lip. He could see now that her hair was a dark purple, a deep berry-coloured wash over whatever her natural shade of brown had been. It figured. The Saints weren't very good at subtlety.

He saw the moment she realised the money was gone. He was laughing at the face she pulled… but then her expression wasn't a caricature anymore. The Boss bared her teeth, narrowed her eyes, and—

"Shit!" Matt yelped, flinching in his chair.

—Christ, she actually punched the fucking screen. Punched it to death, in fact. The feed crackled out, and he found himself giving a rather shocked laugh, aware of the sound of Kirsten chuckling in his ear.

"See? That bitch is insane. Fuckin' psycho, right there."

Matt didn't disagree. "Um, did you pick them up again after that? I should tell Loren—"

"They stole a banged-up Solar about a block down from the bodega, and I lost them somewhere around Sunset Park," Kirsten said, sounding annoyed. "Sending you the plate number in case they haven't ditched it. Looked like they were heading west, which is shitty because there's fuck all camera coverage I can get to in the suburbs, unless you've got a spare spy satellite lying around."

Matt shrugged. "That could be arranged, but I can't see we need to bother. For all I know, Killbane's caught up with them by now, especially if they were heading right into Luchadore territory. _Not_ a clever move on their part. I'll call Loren, but… I don't know… maybe we should be ready to up the surveillance. Just in case."

Kirsten snorted. "Whatever. I'll wait to hear on the news that a bunch of 'roid-tanked psychopaths ripped into a couple of crazed skanks in the middle of a residential street. You know, bloodshed, civilian casualties, extensive property damage—"

"A typical Thursday in Steelport," he agreed, and they shared a smirk. "All right. Thanks, Kirsten."

"Any time, sexy," she said, throwing him another wink as she signed off.

Matt's mouth twisted ruefully as he stared at the spot she had occupied on his screen. Women were confusing, complicated creatures. Oh, Kirsten flirted with him—she enjoyed it—but she didn't actually want to go out with him. She'd made that abundantly clear when he finally got up the nerve to ask her… as if she thought it was funny that he'd fancied her in the first place. Maybe that was what she'd been aiming for: setting him up so she could have a laugh. Either way, it had worked out in the end—they overcame the awkwardness; they were friends, and Matt trusted her implicitly—but he still didn't _understand_.

He shook the thoughts away and pulled up a new voice call window, preparing to dial the secure client he'd installed on Mr. Loren's phone. The old geezer barely understood how to work the thing, although he was far from an unintelligent man. Still, Matt might as well let him know the accounts were cleared, and pass on the information about the Saints' last known whereabouts… just in case Killbane hadn't gotten there first. He probably _would_ have done—a loose pack of Luchadores causing chaos throughout the city could flush out anything, or anyone—but Matt couldn't deny a lingering concern. A mild sinking feeling, he supposed, as if just maybe Loren had underestimated the Saints… or at least underestimated how much he'd pissed them off.

After all, Matt was finding it very difficult to forget the sheer force of rage in the Boss's face.


	2. Chapter 2

**2: No Dog in the Fight**

* * *

The entire fucking apartment stunk of pot. The smell of it was everywhere, ingrained into the curtains, the rugs, the furniture… and, speaking of furniture, some of the stains on that couch were pretty damn nasty.

Actually, the whole place was nasty. It was dingy and damp, with plaster flaking off the walls and the intensely lived-in feel that a serious stoner's crib always had, because they did fucking nothing with their time except sit amid the piles of crap and get lit. Empty pizza boxes and takeout cartons were piled up next to the door, but despite the mess and decay Iggy hadn't seen any roaches. This didn't surprise her. Even motherfuckin' bugs had some standards.

She supposed it wouldn't matter. They shouldn't have to crash here long. She just needed to wait for the cavalry to arrive from Stilwater, and then she could work out what her next move was going to be and, more importantly, exactly how she was going to rip out Phillipe Loren's fucking throat.

Maybe it would have been smart to use this time to lick her wounds and get her head clear, but she couldn't even think about resting. The past few days had jolted her badly, and she wasn't down from the shock yet.

It didn't matter that she was supposed to be the Boss. You could be the rawest motherfucker on the block, you could be stone-cold twenty-four-seven, and there were still some things that bit you in the ass the minute you had time to stop and realise they were more than just a bad dream. Grief was one of those things. Grief, and loss, and anger and… fuck, how had it come to this?

It had started with the bank job going bad. Iggy couldn't believe that had happened. How had she not known what she was taking the crew into?

She'd been arrogant. Stupid. Complacent. The Saints fucking _owned_ Stilwater… it had never even occurred to her that some other bunch of assholes would try to encroach on her town. Loren's Syndicate had some fucking nerve, she had to admit. First the set-up at the bank, and payrolling the damn cops—outbidding the Saints on their own fucking protection! Jesus!—and man, she had to admit that there was some serious money involved here.

She supposed, as the Saints had grown in numbers and strength, she should have been thinking about where they'd go next. It wasn't surprising that they'd run up against another outfit that was bigger and better funded than them—hell, Iggy had never been naïve enough to believe the Saints were the first or only crew who'd realised how lucrative big business could be, and she'd always known the world was bigger than Stilwater—but she hadn't expected this, and she hadn't expected it _now_… and that made her so fucking mad.

Loren's people had got the drop on her. Big time. They'd made her look weak, stupid… and she had been. It was her fault. She should have seen it. She should have been ready. You always had to be ready in this life. She _knew_ that. It was the first thing she'd learned back on the Row, and she'd had the lesson again and again over the years. If you weren't ready, if you didn't _stay_ ready, bad shit happened.

She should have known.

Fuck it, if she hadn't been so focused on all that shit about "brand awareness" and "marketing platforms", screwing cash out of T-shirt designs and comic books and that motherfucking movie, maybe—just maybe—Johnny would still be alive.

Iggy hated the way her thoughts were spinning. She scowled and swung her feet off the rickety dinette table on which they were currently resting, leaving the Kobra pistol she'd taken from one of Loren's men lying on the stained surface. Her scuffed combat boots hit the floorboards with a thud, and she pushed herself out of the worn wooden chair, pacing irritably across the dirty floor. The knuckles of her right hand—the one with "sink" inked across it in sea-green serif capitals—were bloody and painful, though she had accrued enough bumps and scrapes from the all-out fuckery that had happened this week that she could ignore this particular pain among pains. She should probably stop trying to take her frustrations out on inanimate objects, though. Hitting the ATM machine had been painful, and she wasn't sure if she could catch something from punching through the rotting drywall in this place.

At least the hole she'd made in the wall near the front door wasn't exactly ruining the apartment's immaculate décor. Nothing in Shaundi's ex's place (what was his name again? Timmy or Jimmy or whatever the fuck…) looked as if it worked properly. Hell, nothing even looked halfway to hygienic. The kitchen was both tiny and disgusting, with doors hanging off the cabinets and a microwave in which it appeared that somebody might have tried to nuke a turd. The bathroom was enough to convince Iggy that the toilet seat would either give her hepatitis or possibly rabies, and she was going fucking stir crazy stuck in here, with nothing to stare at but the flickering TV or the peeling wallpaper that looked like it belonged in a retirement home.

She was going fucking crazy… and Johnny was dead.

It didn't seem real. Or, rather, it seemed too real, like the kind of nightmare where you were stuck in one place and couldn't get away from the monster coming towards you, even though you knew it was going to fuck you up when it got there.

Johnny had been right, though, hadn't he? What he'd said about the Saints' name meaning more than body spray and ass-tasting energy drink. She knew that. She'd known it from the beginning, but she hadn't acted on it. All of this was her own damn fault. She'd let them get caught up in it, because she'd always been too eager to make a quick buck when she could—hell, you never knew if the chance would be there tomorrow—and, even if Iggy hadn't _liked_ the corporate shit they bought into, she had let the crew do it. She'd signed off on it… didn't think it would be all that bad, as long as no one expected _her_ to pose for a magazine or do any fucking commercials.

Well, it hadn't all been one big laugh, had it? They'd made themselves look soft, like a bunch of pussies. And maybe they were. After all, what the fuck use was the shitload of money their brand raked in if the crew couldn't stand up for themselves when they were challenged?

Iggy let a long, hard breath out between her teeth and leaned her head back, glowering at the cracks in the yellowed ceiling. The worst thing—aside from what had happened with Johnny—was how fucking effective the Syndicate had been in bringing the fight to the Saints' door. If they had just been quietly trying to muscle in on Stilwater, it wouldn't have been so bad… but that didn't seem like Loren's style.

No. Getting the Saints' Boss thrown in jail, then fucking kidnapping her—that was just an excessively rude introduction, and Iggy was planning on extracting an inventive revenge. For that, and for Johnny.

She just wasn't sure how the fuck that was going to work right now.

After the fight on Loren's plane, after… what happened… she and Shaundi had bailed out, and they'd wound up on the northeastern side of Steelport, maybe a little less than two miles from the airport, at about five in the fucking morning. They'd had to walk for a quarter of an hour before they could find a car to boost that actually had all its wheels, and hadn't already been lit on fire.

This city was a fucking dump. Iggy could see why Loren wanted in on Stilwater's action—if it had ever really been about that, instead of him just wanting to smack the Saints down before they rose too high.

Shaundi's ex (Iggy was almost certain his name was Jimmy, or maybe Simon. Or was it Steve?) had greeted them with the unflappable calmness of the truly high, and provided them with a bag of Cheetos and the use of his phone, since neither of them had ever gotten theirs back after the afternoon they spent in jail. And that was another fucking wonderful thing… Stilwater's finest still had her goddamn cell phone and her personal effects, thanks to Loren's people smuggling them out of custody—if you could call it "smuggling" when a bunch of assholes just showed up and walked you out of the back door, while the cops smiled and looked the other way.

Iggy was pissed about her stuff, though. Phone, wallet, nearly two grand in cash she was certain she wouldn't see again, her favourite .45 Shepherd (oops, that was a concealed carrying charge on top of grand larceny, and by now probably also skipping custody… like it mattered), and a cocktail napkin with a really hot girl's number on it. Fuckin' cops. She was going to have to get a hold of Troy when she got back to Stilwater, and have a serious fucking talk. Maybe one that involved her foot connecting with his balls. Repeatedly.

The first thing Iggy had done was call Pierce and tell him about Johnny, and the rows of zeros on their bank balance. It was the most difficult fucking phone call of her life, and it had got undeniably worse when she found out what was happening back in Stilwater.

Pierce knew about the money situation. Somehow—who the fuck knew how—the Saints' bank accounts had been hacked. The money was gone. All the fucking money… every liquid asset, everything from the Ultor accounts they could get to, and the funds from every single legitimate enterprise to which the crew was tied. Pierce and the legal team were trying their hardest to keep it under wraps for now, but the truth was unavoidable, and it was going to cause a fucking meltdown when it got out. The entire accounts department—headed by Rocco and a couple of the boys who used to run the numbers game in town—were collectively shitting themselves, and nobody knew how to fix it.

The way things looked this morning, not a single member of the Row had two quarters left to their name, and while the Syndicate had neither claimed responsibility nor signed their handiwork, Iggy very much doubted that it could be anybody's fault but Loren's.

That was the point at which she had punched a hole in the wall, though Shaundi's ex hadn't seem to mind too much about it. Shaundi was outraged and pissed about the money when Iggy explained, but then more outraged and more pissed that they were talking about money when Johnny was dead. And _that_ was the point at which Shaundi and… Simon, or Gary, or Jose or whoever the fuck he was had gone out for a while, on the pretext of getting some food, while Iggy stayed here and waited for the cavalry.

The reality of it was that Shaundi was having a hard time even looking at her right now, much less talking, and Iggy couldn't blame her. She'd been right, too: Gat couldn't even drive stick. He should never have been in that cockpit, and Iggy should never have let him try to play the hero in the first place. He fucking sucked at it. And yet, she'd somehow never believed it would kill him in the end.

"_¡Ay, chingalo!"_ Iggy snarled, turning abruptly as her angry pacing led her to the unused fireplace at the end of the room. It smelled dusty, and damp was crawling up the wallpaper in the corner beside it.

She cussed a little more under her breath—not that it helped her feel better—and crossed to the small, grimy window that looked out onto the parking lot behind the building and, beyond that, the blocky, grey shapes of Steelport.

Needless to say, the window didn't budge when she tried to open it. Fucking Christ… did nothing at all work in this place? Iggy smacked the side of her fist against the window frame, but the only thing that did was dislodge a few chips of flaking paint. She let out a growl of frustration and turned to glare at the empty room. An ugly lamp with an orange-and-brown shade stood on the coffee table, next to a couple of baggies of weed and an empty pizza box that smelled like it was about a week old. Why did everything here gotta smell so fucking bad?

Iggy grabbed the lamp, yanking the cord out of the wall, and hurled it at the window. Glass shattered out into the smoggy morning, making a pretty, punchy kind of noise, and leaving a jagged hole in the wooden window frame. A shard of glass dropped off the intact upper portion of the pane like an afterthought, and tinkled onto the sill before bouncing down to the lot below.

Iggy moved to the broken window and breathed in deeply. You couldn't really call the air fresh—it smelled of grit and exhaust fumes, with a hint of fried onions and grease and a vague waft of piss from the alley below—but at least it wasn't so stagnant.

She looked out at the city's bristling shapes, and listened to the thrumming roar of the traffic. It didn't calm her down much, but it gave her something to focus on.

The way she saw it, she had two choices. Pierce and a few of the crew would be here soon to pick her and Shaundi up, and make sure the journey home didn't wind up with any more crazy shit happening. She could go back to Stilwater with them and try to shore up the damage Loren's people had done… talk to Legal Lee about dealing with the banks, and see Rocco and the other guys about getting some money moving before the Saints' cashflow problem either became public knowledge, or caused them the kind of issues that would occur if bad motherfuckers who expected to be paid on time were_ not _paid on time. Of course, she'd come back for Loren. She wanted that to be special.

On the other hand… did she have time? Was that French fuck—oh, no, right: _Belgian_ fuck—planning to hit them while they were down? It seemed logical. It was what Iggy would have done, if she'd been in a position to financially cripple her rivals before blowing their asses up. Shit, wouldn't that have been something? There had been times—before the sponsorship deals and the corporate takeovers—when the Saints could really have used the money.

Iggy snorted softly to herself, still leaning on the windowsill. She felt a little cold; all she had on was a sleeveless tee and a pair of unflattering skinnies, which was what she'd been wearing under the stupid Johnny Gat mascot costume she'd donned for the ill-fated bank robbery. Worst idea ever. Worst idea _of Johnny's_, actually. Asshole. Fucking asshole, leaving them like this. If she was lucky, Pierce would have had the common sense to grab a change of clothes for both her and Shaundi on his way, although the words "Pierce" and "common sense" did not necessarily sit well together in a sentence.

Her watch had been broken at some point during the fight on the plane. Iggy glanced down at its slim silver band, a line of sleek paleness against her tan skin. No point keeping it on now, she decided, and tugged it off. She tossed it out of the broken window, not listening to hear it fall, and she let her hand rest for a few moments on the shattered frame. The traces of badly chipped turquoise polish clung to her short, blunt nails—this bitch needed a manicure—and she realised that a stone was missing from one of her thumb rings. Fuck.

Everything was fucked up. Iggy shivered, and folded her arms across her body. Her fingers skimmed the complex lines and patterns of the ink that wrapped her right arm. She loved her sleeve. All her tattoos, in fact, right from her first—a shitty wolf's head done by some scratcher back in Stilwater, which she'd had properly covered up on her seventeenth birthday—to her latest: an eagle on her chest with a banner that read "time to soar", and was meant to have commemorated the fact that, for a while there, it had really felt like she _was_ soaring. She let herself trace the familiar shapes—the anchor and the ship's wheel, the koi, the peonies and spidery chrysanthemums, and the grimacing Hannya that roared from between them, warning of revenge and strength… or whatever bullshit symbolism her artist had talked about—and both the action and the memories calmed her a little.

Iggy liked being under the needle. She liked zoning out, just feeling the vibration of the machine against her skin, the occasional bite in between the scratches, and the way her body bloomed to warmth as the design took shape. The only ones that had really hurt badly were the fleur-de-lis on her neck, the gecko on her ribs, and the octopus that wrapped the outside of her left thigh, because one tentacle went right next to her butt cheek, and there was a lot of shading on that fucker.

She wasn't going to go back to Stilwater. She knew that, somehow.

Not yet.

It was stupid, she knew, but leaving wouldn't feel right, even though it was probably the best thing for the Saints. The crew was vulnerable right now. She should go home… go make sure they were ready for whatever the Syndicate planned to throw at them. That was the sensible and logical thing to do—and it was what Loren probably expected of her, since she hadn't had the decency to die like he planned—but "sensible" and "logical" were two adjectives that Iggy was aware had rarely, if ever, been used to describe her.

Then again, what was she going to do in Steelport? This was definitely Syndicate turf. She didn't know the city, she had no contacts, no cash… was she going to go back to sticking up liquor stores for grocery money and hoping somebody would be kind enough to give her a lift to wherever Loren could be found?

Ah, it was so, so stupid. This wasn't her city. She was at a disadvantage here. She ought to go back to Stilwater and let Loren come to her, face him on her own ground. His proposal had been a percentage of Stilwater's action for the Syndicate, right? Well, if he wanted that, he could come and take it, and she should be there to defend it. She'd be crazy to stay in Steelport and try to hit him in his own yard.

Fucking crazy.

Iggy took a deep breath, turned away from the window, and tried to find a spot of empty floor that didn't look too gross. She bounced on her toes, feeling and acknowledging all the aches and the sorenesses in her body, and testing out what was comfortable. She stretched, leaned, started to throw a few light punches and—when nothing immediately protested too badly—settled into a couple of minutes' shadowboxing. She hurt, but she could live with hurt. Pain meant you were still alive. She held onto that thought and, gradually, the physical activity started to dull the way her mind was gnawing at itself.

Johnny would've stayed. He'd have ridden right into the fucking centre of Steelport, all guns blazing, gone straight to Loren and pulled his spine out through his stomach. _Then _he'd have gone home and mopped up the mess. Maybe stopped for pizza on the way.

Hell, the crew in Stilwater could take care of themselves, couldn't they? She'd told Pierce what was likely to go down, told him to make sure the Saints were ready for it, and then to get himself the fuck over here with some backup. Speaking of which, he should be here before long… and Iggy was glad of that. She hadn't realised how much she wanted to see a familiar face: someone who wasn't Shaundi, who hadn't been on that plane and wouldn't automatically look at her as if she could have stopped it all from happening.

No. She couldn't keep thinking like that. She had to get her head back together. The Saints would cope. It wasn't like they were defenceless back in Stilwater, anyway. The motherfuckers on the Row were used to dealing with shit. And _she_ had to deal with Loren.

What he'd done couldn't go unanswered, and Iggy didn't wanna give him any more time to hide. When Pierce and the boys got here, they would work out a plan. She would find out just how this shithole of a city rolled, and then she would turn it over and break it open.

Iggy smiled to herself at the thought, adding a few kicks and twists to her movements and enjoying the feel of her body flowing into the routine. This was natural, right, and comfortable. She watched her hands move, right and left, "sink" and "swim". Well, she was gonna fuckin' swim. She always had done, and that wasn't going to change. She was going to do it for the crew, and for Johnny, and she bet Shaundi was going to agree with her.

The Saints might not have had a stake in Steelport before now, but Loren had changed that. Now, there was no other option. She was not gonna run home and wait for him to try and take her down. She was going to strike first, and she was going to do it hard. She was going to take everything he had, and she wasn't going to stop until the Syndicate was in pieces, and Steelport either belonged to the Saints, or was burning so brightly that they could toast marshmallows on it all the way from Stilwater.

There were some details to work out, sure, but at least it was the start of a plan.

After all, Iggy might not have had a dog in this fight before, but Loren had certainly given her something to bark about.

The sound of car engines purred on the street below, coasting to a halt outside, and Iggy dropped her hands to her sides, listening. The apartment building was between a laundry and a pawnshop, but it fronted onto a wide, busy road, and she grinned to herself as she heard the engines idle close by, underneath the window.

She darted across the room, grabbing the Kobra from the dinette table and ducking to peer out of the window. A dusty black Neuron was running outside the pawnshop next door, and she watched its driver's side door swing open. A familiar figure emerged—pale suit, somewhat crumpled, flat cap, and a concerned frown—and Iggy rapped on the window with the knuckles of her left hand.

Pierce looked up just as she was dashing out of the front door, past the hole in the drywall, ready to take the stairs two at a time to get down there and let them in.

Goddamn, but she'd missed her boys… and they had some fucking work to do.

* * *

_**A/N**: Thanks for reading! I'm relying on the internet for my command of Mexican Spanish slang and swears. Fluent speakers, please feel free to correct me. __  
_


	3. Chapter 3

**3. Lawyers, Guns, and Money**

* * *

The problem with the Boss, aside from her short fuse, was her impulsiveness. Sure, she got shit done, but hurtling through whatever insane plan—or lack of plan—she'd gotten them embroiled in, without a fucking clue how to get out of it again… well, depending on your point of view, it was either exhilarating or just plain annoying.

At this point, Shaundi found it fucking infuriating.

They could just have robbed a gun store. _Friendly Fire_ had branches all over Steelport, but no. No, that wasn't enough for the Boss. They had to turn over the fucking National Guard armoury.

Even Pierce thought it was a terrible idea. He'd been there when Shaundi got back with breakfast burritos and a six-pack; freshly arrived with eight trustworthy Saints, all flagging as little purple as possible and driving a small convoy of untraceable, nondescript chop-shop cars. He'd even got a helicopter on standby, and all he wanted to do was get the both of them back to Stilwater without any more shit hitting the fan.

He probably hadn't deserved how badly she'd snapped at him, but what the fuck was she supposed to say? She didn't want to walk away from this fight.

The worst part of it was that, to start with, Shaundi had backed the Boss up completely. Fuck, no, she didn't want to leave town without getting back at Loren. There was no way she wanted to just run back to Stilwater and wait for the Syndicate to make a move on their turf… and yes, she'd been too angry and too hurt to agree that it would be smart to wait. She wanted blood, she wanted it now, and she wanted to take it while it was still hot and streaming.

She had expected the Boss to say, "okay, bring in the boys and we'll fuck shit up", because fucking shit up was what Iggy was good at… but, somehow, Shaundi had not expected the armoury to be her number one target.

That was just plain insane. Which, she supposed, meant she probably shouldn't have been at all surprised that the Boss came up with the idea.

Iggy's complete inability to think any given situation through was what had gotten Johnny killed, and although Shaundi knew, intellectually, that the Boss was hurting bad over that, she couldn't accept it emotionally. She couldn't feel as if, when she looked at her, the Boss had truly understood it at all. She was still being… well, being herself, with her big mouth and that horrible glint in her eye that she had whenever she got a stupid idea. She shouldn't have been getting ideas. She should have been curled up on the ground, screaming out her heart the way Shaundi wanted to do, because it didn't seem fucking _right_ that Gat was dead and they were still here, still walking around… still breathing.

Obviously, Shaundi knew just folding up in a corner and bawling would have been the last thing Johnny would've wanted them to do. If he'd been here, he'd probably have laughed when Iggy stabbed a finger at the map Pierce pulled up on his phone, asked what it was, and then declared that _that_ was where you went when you wanted fuckin' guns.

At first, Shaundi thought she was joking, but she was fucking serious. Robbing the National Guard. Okay, so it _did _mean—if they could pull it off—access to the kind of military grade hardware that Loren's people at the Stilwater bank had been packing. That much made sense; there was no point trying to go after that bastard with nothing more than a few .45s and a couple of flashbangs. But… really? There must have been another way to get guns.

Johnny would have leapt at it, though. She knew that. Incredibly shitty idea or not, he'd have been all in, and Shaundi would have been weirdly okay with that.

She would have been okay with it, because it would have meant that—around lunchtime, when they carjacked a fucking cement mixer and drove it through the gates of the fucking National Guard armoury—they would have had Johnny fucking Gat on their side, and the odds wouldn't have looked quite so impossible.

Instead, Shaundi had been treated to watching the manic grin on Iggy's face as she slammed the stolen cement mixer—and, really, who the fuck stole cement mixers?—into the side of the warehouse complex, then jumped out and unloaded an entire magazine into the engine, shooting until the massive vehicle blew up, taking most of the wall and the reinforced metal doors with it.

Thank god that they'd had the helicopter to keep watch and lay down some cover fire, especially when the alarms were blaring and the reinforcements started arriving. They'd been throwing every weapon they could find into the backs of the Infuegos and Neurons that the handful of Saints from Stilwater had brought… and then Shaundi had seen the Boss get distracted by the biggest fucking bomb imaginable. She was like a kid in a candy store, if the candy was a massive military explosive designed to be deployed from a fucking cargo plane. Typical Iggy. Something new and shiny that would go kaboom, so of course she had to have it. That and the UAV drones—and god, she would _not_ shut up about Shaundi recognising those! Just because she knew what they were. Like she was meant to be a complete dumbass. So what? So, maybe she'd dated a special forces guy once. The information was useful, wasn't it?

They had very nearly not gotten out of there alive… but they had, and Shaundi had led the way, driving someone else's car and leading the convoy of cars back to her ex's place at breakneck speed, while Iggy leaned out of the passenger side window, punching the air with a pistol and screaming wordless, jubilant howls at the wind.

Shaundi had been real tempted to brake suddenly on the bridge and torpedo her right out of the car and down into the water.

They'd made it, though. Got away, got lucky… lost the cop cars and the guards on the side streets, making the most of the chaos they'd caused with the drones. It gave them a smoke screen, a distraction to hide behind while they made their escape. Shaundi was still amazed that they'd done it, but they had. They even got back to the apartment in one piece, where the crew unloaded the guns and goodies, and Pierce tried to find somewhere for the goddamn helicopter to land and hide the bomb. Shaundi got Martin, her ex, to fix them up with a buddy of his who managed a warehouse not far from the docks. He worked for a haulage company, so they'd have access to a truck for moving the damn bomb, and somewhere to keep it safe… at least until they could find out where Loren was, and shove the damn thing right under his ass.

The Boss was so fucking pleased with herself. All right, it wasn't bad for a day's work—their first day in Steelport, no less—but god damn it. She shouldn't have been grinning that wide. It seemed wrong, somehow. That they could have done that—done that crazy shit in broad fucking daylight—and Johnny couldn't have walked off that plane.

Shaundi nearly lost it when the Boss told her to go back to Stilwater. Go home, like this was okay, like it was okay to admit defeat? What the fuck?

"Girl, you don't get messy," Pierce had said, looking at her with sympathy in his face, like he thought she was too mad to be thinking straight. "Let us take care of business."

Well, maybe she was angry, but that only made her more determined. The Saints had a stake in Steelport now, even if that stake was no more than revenge. They weren't going anywhere until they'd taken Loren down, and now at least they had enough of an arsenal to get started.

"Fuck you," she'd snapped, glaring at him. "I'm doing this for Johnny."

And _that _was what mattered. This shit was the very least they owed to Gat, and Shaundi didn't plan on stopping until that debt was repaid, no matter who she had to go through to settle it.

_**~o~O~o~**_

Iggy rubbed the fingers of her left hand across her forehead, then pushed them through her hair. The dark purple dye job was getting a little greasy, and she smelled like sweat and cordite, but there was no fucking way she was using the shower in this apartment.

"Okay… let's go through this again, _que no_? We got guns. We got ammo. We got a big fucking bomb. We just don't know where we're going."

"Fuck that!" Shaundi spat. "Loren's got people all over the place. His—what'd they call themselves? The Syndicate? It's a so-called 'legitimate' company. There's a fucking skyscraper full of offices and shit right in the middle of the city! There are fucking _signposts on the freeway_. Syndicate Tower. I say we start there."

"Whatchu sayin'?" Pierce winced. "We ain't gonna blow up a fuckin' building, not even with… with… what are those again?"

Shaundi sighed irritably, her gaze flicking to the briefcase that stood by the coffee table. "UAV drones. And maybe not, but we could do some damage, right? And we got the Daisy Cutter. All we need to do is get it close enough and—"

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen! Fuck… we can't just drive that thing right up to the front door. They see us coming, they gon' blow us to motherfucking pieces, and I do _not _want to be anywhere near that thing when it goes off. Anyway, who even says Loren is in that building? No way! We gotta think this thing through."

Shaundi growled in frustration, curling her lip and muttering something about wasting fucking time.

Iggy crossed her arms and leaned back against the empty fireplace. Girl had a point. Running full tilt at this shit wasn't enough, no matter how much it had felt like that was the answer a couple of hours ago. No matter what they had—and every surface in the place now groaned with boxes of ammo and weaponry, while the eight of the crew who'd come from Stilwater lounged around the place, looking faintly disgusted at the state of the apartment—she was sure Loren had better.

"Nuh-uh," she said, cutting across her lieutenants' bickering. "If we wanna take the fight to these assholes, we gotta work out where their angles are. Where the money is, where the control is. If Loren's people got Steelport locked down as tight as he says, they're not doing it through multi-national arms deals. Not the day-to-day shit."

Pierce's brow wrinkled as he gave her a suspicious look. "You think you're gonna find Loren flickin' cards on the corner?"

Shaundi looked about ready to explode. Dark shadows made the skin under her eyes look tight and shiny, and there was a stiffness in her body that spoke of barely concealed rage fermenting into homicidal anger. Iggy was worried about her; she'd known how Shaundi felt about Johnny, and she also knew that this was about more than that. It hadn't been about just losing someone she loved… it was about losing family. She felt it too—felt it like someone had cut her fucking hand off at the wrist—but they couldn't afford to let it blind them.

No more stupid mistakes. Not now, and not ever again. The price was too fucking high.

"No," she said patiently, "but I think, if we're going to find out where to hit these assholes, we need to do our research. We need to know what game they got in town… _then _we fuck things up."

Pierce cast a dubious glance around the apartment, and Iggy followed his gaze. The assorted Saints lounging on the unsavoury couch, or against the walls and the dinette set, were all trusted faces—Joe and Will, the two Hall brothers; Nina, the ex-Marine; Ricky; Tyrell; Sandman; Jonas; and Renata, with whom Iggy was very well acquainted indeed—but this was asking a lot of them, and eight extra pairs of hands was not going to be enough to take on the whole fucking Syndicate.

Pierce raised his eyebrows meaningfully, and Iggy let out a short, irritable breath.

"What?"

He shrugged. "Hey, if you wanna bring the rest of the boys in, I'm just sayin' we're gonna need a bigger place. This studio shit ain't gonna work."

"You're worried about real estate?" Shaundi demanded, jerking a thumb at the stockpiled weaponry littered around the apartment. "We have _guns_. Let's use them."

"Whoa, Shaundi…." Iggy's tone hardened; she didn't want to let this shit devolve any further into an argument in front of everyone. "Pierce has a point. If we're not going home yet, we need to get our shit together. Your ex got contacts here? People we can use?"

Shaundi glanced to the far end of the room, where her ex was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bong, underneath a peeling promo poster for some skeezy cabaret show. He didn't seem to notice he was being looked at, and cheerfully nudged the Saint standing next to him—Sandman, a sallow-cheeked ex-biker in a vintage leather jacket—in the knee, offering up the bong apparently in the spirit of neighbourly friendship.

Iggy resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose and sigh.

"I'll get a list," Shaundi said. "From what I remember, there used to be some good connections, but I don't know how far the Syndicate's reach goes."

"Okay. Anything is good. Chop shops, fences… fuck, even the kids slinging weed on the corner. I want to know how this place works, and I want to know where everything is, and who runs it. Pierce?"

"Yeah, Boss?"

"I wanna talk to Legal and Rocco and find out what the fuck is happening with our money. You got a point; if we're going to bring the Saints in, we need a bigger place, and we need some scratch. Find me ways to get those things. And," Iggy added, glancing down at her grubby tee and stained jeans, "somewhere to get a change of fucking clothes. And a phone. Me and Shaundi need new phones… I want my fucking stuff back from the cops."

Pierce nodded. "You gonna catch a little rest?" he suggested, which was about as subtle as he ever got.

Iggy glared blearily at him. Again, he had a point. She was exhausted, and nobody who was this tired ever did anything except get into trouble.

"Yeah," she said. "You too, Shaundi. I want everybody rested up and ready to go. When we're… ready to go. Fuck. You know what I mean. All right?"

There was a loose chorus of assent from around the room. It wasn't the most inspiring speech she'd ever given but, considering she hadn't slept in close to forty-eight hours—and that several of those hours had involved adrenaline-thumping bullshit of the kind sane people tried to avoid—Iggy thought it wasn't too bad.

"I'm'na sleep in the car," she said, catching the keys to one of the Neurons parked in the building's garage that Pierce tossed to her. "Come wake me when you got something."

"Sure thing, Boss."

She felt Shaundi's scowl on the back of her neck as she went… not that there was much she could do about it. Sure, they could run out into the city and start shooting shit up, which would show Loren precisely where they were. He'd scrape them off his fucking shoe like dog shit. Someone with access to all that hardware had who the fuck knew how many people behind him. If they wanted to win, they were going to have to wait, no matter how much that fucking sucked.

Iggy rubbed a hand over her face as she sloped out of the door and down the building's narrow staircase. It still smelled of pot out here, and mildew. She could hear the quiet murmur of voices inside the apartment—Shaundi, no doubt complaining, and Pierce trying to put plans together. If anybody could get the shit that they needed organised, he could. He was great at resources, even if he never got the credit for shit.

She was almost at the bottom of the stairs when she heard the door open and close again, and she glanced up to see Renata following her. Iggy paused, one hand on the end post of the flimsy banister, and smiled, shaking her head gently.

"What? I need a fucking audience to sleep now?"

Renata, hands on her hips, glared haughtily down the stairs, and it was difficult not to be glad to see her. She was a short, curvy, hard headed African Mexican, with a thick, sleek tail of black hair pinned at the back of her neck, and a semi-permanent scowl that could fry dissenters at fifty paces. Tight jeans, baggy black Saints hoodie, gold fleur-de-lis nose stud, and a hawk tattooed on the left side of her neck… coupled with her "don't piss me off" expression, Iggy found the whole look very attractive.

"Don't jump at me," Renata snapped. "I figured you could use the company, _guera_. Or maybe a bodyguard."

Iggy raised an eyebrow. Seriously? You fucked a person a few times and they thought they could get away with anything. She was too tired to argue, though, so she let the "_guera_" slide and jerked her head towards the door.

"C'mon."

_**~o~O~o~**_

There was something comforting about the smell of gasoline and metal on concrete. Iggy wasn't sure what it was, or why she felt that way about it, except for the fact that, over the years, she'd spent a fair amount of time sleeping in cars. When she was a little girl, one of her uncles had worked for a mechanic in Stilwater, and she used to be allowed to sit in the cars in the shop while he was busy—probably because it kept her out of the way. She used to like the way they felt like little cocoons; backseats that all had different colours, different smells, different lives attached to them. Sometimes, she'd imagine what the people the cars belonged to were like… and sometimes she'd just go through the glove compartments and see if they had any good candy or loose change.

Iggy's first car had been a third hand beige Slingshot, and she'd lived out of it for a while after things soured at home. She had eaten, drunk, smoked, fucked… done everything in that car, more or less. Like her own portable home on wheels. Her shell. She'd felt safe in it.

She felt kind of safe as she got into the Neuron, the greasy fluorescent light of the garage spilling down through the windshield. Renata hung back at first, unsure whether the Boss really wanted company but fuck it, Iggy was tired and sore, and ready for a little comforting. She clicked her tongue as she held the car's rear door open with her foot, motioning the other woman to join her on the backseat.

"I thought you were going to get some rest," Renata said dryly as she shut the door after her.

Iggy, one leg up on the seat and the world weighing down on her shoulders, shrugged. "Maybe I need something to help me sleep, _esa_."

Renata scoffed incredulously, shaking her head. She wore deep brown lipstick with a darker liner tracing her mouth, exaggerating the fullness of her lips, and her eyes were shadowed with thick, smoky flicks of kohl.

"I'm glad you're all right, Boss," she said quietly, her lips crumpling into a half-smile at one corner. "We were all worried. And with Johnny—"

"Shh." Iggy winced. "Don't. Okay?"

She didn't want to talk about Johnny. Didn't want to think about him, and didn't want to keep imagining his voice, or half-believing that he was gonna burst through the door at any second, demanding to know why the fuck they'd left him on that plane.

Renata let one hand fall to Iggy's thigh, patting her gently through the worn denim. "A'right. That's cool."

Iggy leaned back against the corner of the backseat, where the upholstery met the uncomfortable lumps of the door moulding, and watched Renata's face cycle through a bunch of conflicted expressions. To be honest, she didn't really want to talk at all. She just wanted to feel a little bit alive, and then sleep away all the hurt.

"I'm glad you came," she said, because she was pretty sure it was what Renata wanted to hear, and it was even basically true. "I appreciate that."

She lifted her left hand, tracing her fingertips up Renata's wrist to the baggy sleeve of her sweatshirt. As she did so, Iggy could see the other woman's gaze sliding to the portrait tattoo on her upper arm, and she cussed inwardly. It was a good likeness, but the person it depicted hadn't been "My Girl" for a long time. Iggy had been planning to get it covered up, but she just hadn't gotten around to it. Priorities, she supposed. Hers had all been fucked up.

Like Johnny had said, too much focus on that corporate bullshit, and now look at them. All that time getting used to wealth and power, and not fucking thinking about it. And now here she was, once again in the backseat of some shitty car, parked under a building that smelled of mould and weed. It was probably karma or some shit like that.

It stopped mattering as much when Renata wriggled closer, leaning in to give her some sugar, and providing the comforting weight and warmth of another body pressed against her own.

Iggy slipped her hand up that baggy black sweatshirt—bright purple letters on the front, with a purple fleur-de-lis—and zoned in on the soft, yielding joy of Renata's magnificent rack. She liked boobs… not just for the way they felt under her hands or against her mouth or body, or the magic of burying her face in them and breathing in, but for the way women like Renata caught their breath when she touched them. There were few things nicer than the hitch in a girl's throat when you worked her nipple to hardness against your palm, even through the smooth microfibre of what, Iggy knew from experience, was likely to be Renata's preferred brand of Saints merchandise sports bra.

She'd wondered, from time to time, about this girl's tendency to wear so much of their fucking logo. Was it all pride, or did she just like being marked? Iggy wasn't sure. Renata hadn't been rolling with the Saints that long—a little over a year, all told; she'd been canonised the previous winter—and they'd only fooled around, on and off, for a month or so. It was a no-pressure, no-strings thing. Iggy had liked her for her authenticity. There were a lot of girls in Stilwater—a lot of hot girls, tough girls, beautiful girls, and fiery girls, strippers and pros and gang _chicas_, punks and biker chicks—but someone who would give her lip instead of lap dances stood out… and Iggy liked people who were different. She liked confidence, and she liked the moment that confidence fell away, like it did when she pushed her knee between Renata's thighs and—with her bloodied right hand, the hand not currently fondling her breasts—pulled her close.

Iggy knew there going to be lipstick on her face. On her neck, too. She hoped the Neuron had tissues or something in the glove compartment. Renata tasted like hard candy; she liked sour apple flavour, and Iggy liked trying to suck the taste of it off her tongue.

The air between them got hot and close, and the car was not a comfortable place to do most of what Iggy wanted. No hard, angry trib to fuck away the pain, not on this narrow-ass seat. She let her left hand move slowly down Renata's soft stomach, tugging open the fly of her jeans, and she liked the murmured little "oh, Boss…" that broke against her ear.

She was pretty sure Renata called her that when they fucked because she kinked on it although, sometimes, Iggy did get to hear her name on those sweet lips. It rolled off Renata's tongue in a sea of Spanish… Igone, the Basque version of Ascensión. Horrible name. It sounded like some awkward fucking confirmation name, though as far as Iggy was aware, there wasn't a Saint Igone. Well… apart from her, and that was an amusing thought.

She eased her hand into the limited space Renata's jeans allowed, enjoying how restrictive it was, how rushed and dirty the tight denim made everything feel. There was heat under her palm, warmth and need, and she teased at the flimsy boundary of the cotton panties beneath her fingers with practised ease. Kisses piled on kisses, Renata's hands on her, pushing up under her dirty, stained tee, finding every bruise and scrape.

Iggy didn't mind about the soreness. Every pinch and sting bit at her flesh, but it was okay. The door moulding dug into the back of her neck, and that didn't matter either, especially when Renata was kissing her breasts, and kissing the ink on her chest and her ribs.

She pushed deeper, seeking out slick heat and a swift resolution, working her fingers hard and fast. No respite, no second-guessing. Renata sighed and bucked against her hand, swearwords and endearments mingling in the breaths that she smeared against Iggy's skin. She came quickly, eagerly… it wasn't hard to force another one out of her, tease her until she was writhing and biting down on squeals. Iggy withdrew her hand, swiping wet fingers across her mouth before unbuttoning her skinnies and taking Renata's hand in hers.

"You don't want me to go down on you?"

Iggy grinned mirthlessly. "Just this, baby. It's okay."

She wasn't going to ruin the mood by pointing out how long it had been since her last shower. Renata obliged, anyway, and it was enough. It was good. For those few golden minutes, Iggy could forget that she was screwing around in the back of an old jalopy when, this time last week, she'd been sitting in a plush hotel lounge watching people from behind her mirrored aviators and waiting to sign a shitload of contracts. She could forget how far she'd come since her life smelled like gasoline and dirty concrete, and she could forget the ache in her scabbing knuckles and the soreness in her muscles.

She could even forget the plane. Almost. Not quite, but almost.

Iggy sat up to give Renata a friendly squeeze and a kiss before letting her climb over into the front seat and raid the glove compartment. No tissues, but a couple of wet wipes from a soul food place the vehicle's previous owner must have liked. It wasn't as good as a shower, but it was better than nothing.

Iggy settled down on the backseat, the knots of tension eased just enough to let her sleep. She heard Renata fish around in the glove compartment again, then open the car door and light a cigarette. Iggy's nose twitched as she started to fall asleep, the burn of tobacco tickling her breaths.

Just a couple of hours' shut-eye, then she'd be ready. She'd take on the fucking world, find Loren and cram that stupid cigarette down his throat, the lit end first. Burn him up, the way he'd burned her heart out. What he did to Johnny… goddamn gall of that son of a bitch. He'd pay. His whole Syndicate was gonna pay. Burn. Every last one of 'em, screaming in flames.

Iggy woke up with a start, feeling cold and confused, the inside of her head crowded with dreams she didn't remember having. She was in the dark… in a car. Briefly, she couldn't remember how she'd got there, but then it came back. She smelled the sweetness on the air, remembered why she felt that little bit more relaxed—and realised there was a figure standing in the garage doorway.

Iggy sat up and scratched at her head. "Wha— oh. Pierce?"

She blinked. Renata had gone, which was probably for the best. Pierce came around to the car door, and as she opened it he was grinning at her like he had something to show off.

"Not interrupting, huh?" he asked, raising his eyebrows meaningfully as he glanced around the garage.

"Fuck off," Iggy said absently. "You got something for me?"

"Sure do." He leaned on the Neuron's roof, crossed his ankles in a pose of stylish nonchalance, and passed her a brand new iPhone. "There you go, Boss. You got your GPS, contacts, everything imported from the Saintsbook net…."

Iggy frowned. The phone had a bright purple case with a silver fleur-de-lis on it, and "3rd Street" stamped underneath in some kind of fake graffiti stencil font.

"The fuck? We have iPhone cases now?"

"Aw, yeah! Snazzy, huh? Brand new at _Planet Saints_. You remember we got a store opening here, right?"

Iggy winced as her thumb moved over the keys. At least she could trust Pierce to set the damn thing up for her. His aesthetic judgements might occasionally be questionable, but he knew she lacked patience with gadgets.

"I'm surprised Loren hasn't flattened it yet. That woulda sent a message."

Pierce shrugged. "Eh, I swung by there. It's not open officially yet, but they say they've had a lot of Syndicate goons hanging around. Morningstar, mostly, but—"

"Wait, who?"

"That's Loren's crew. One arm of the Syndicate. Word is, he's got the twin sisters who have Steelport's prostitution racket locked up on his side, name of Kiki and Viola DeWynter."

Iggy pulled a face. Her head ached suddenly. "Twins? Oh… shit. They were—"

"On the plane," Pierce finished for her. "Yeah. That's what Shaundi said. The other main players in town are the Deckers—they go in for cyber crime more than bustin' heads, but I hear they can be pretty nasty—and the Luchadores."

Iggy closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for her brain to catch up. "Luchadores. Seriously? Don't tell me, they dress like—"

"Wrestlers. Yeah." Pierce nodded solemnly. "I know."

Well, it wasn't like ridiculous gang themes were new to Iggy. The more shit she saw, the less obtrusive it made Saints purple look.

"Jesus."

"Yeah… Still, Murderbrawl is pretty big here, remember. There's a lot of money in the sports game, and these jokers got the market cornered on steroids and shit."

Iggy stopped fiddling with the phone—she'd got her most important contacts, but she was missing a bunch of shit, and this new model was going to take time to get used to—and glared at him. "You're saying we go after Loren by fucking up 'roid deals and computer nerds?"

Pierce narrowed his eyes. "Aw, get the fuck up and get in the front seat. I'll _show_ you what we got, motherfucker. Just so happens I already found us a new place that's gon' give us room for the boys _and_ piss off Loren."

Iggy cracked a cautious smile and slid out of the backseat, stretching slowly as she stood up. "Mmm… I'm listening."

"So, these Morningstar assholes got places all over town," Pierce continued, going to haul open the garage door. As he talked, the metal creaked, and thin sunlight poured into the poorly lit space, filling it with the dusty kind of afternoon light that spoke of a coming dusk. "They got a penthouse downtown, where they're throwin' some party for their global contacts. I say we crash that shit, kill some motherfuckers, and keep the place for the Saints."

"I'm game. You got a plan to go with this bright idea?"

Pierce opened the Neuron's driver side door, peering into the car critically before he got in. Iggy tossed him the keys, and he smiled as he snatched them out of the air. "Yeah… source says the place is locked down tight, but if you can get the elevator codes, we can bring the boys up from downstairs, cause a little chaos that no one's going to be expecting."

Iggy moved around to open the passenger door. "Sounds good to me. Do we know if Loren'll be there himself?"

"Nope."

She shrugged as she got back into the car. It had been a fond hope. "Well, it's better than nothing. Wait… if the elevator's locked, how am I going to— oh. Right. Penthouse."

Pierce grinned broadly as he settled himself behind the wheel. "Well, why the fuck else did I bring a helicopter?"

Iggy snorted. "Yeah, yeah… you think of everything."

"Damn right! Now, c'mon. We'll head down there, scope out this shit, and I'll show you what else we got. Maybe swing back by _Planet Saints_, get you a change of clothes. I ain't playin', girl; you got some stank on."

Iggy flipped him off casually. "The guys all right while we're gone?"

"Yeah. They're getting ready. Couple of the boys are with Shaundi, checking out some contacts. Think we got a way to make some quick cash, if you don't mind going old school for a while. There's a couple of chop shops in town that don't work exclusively with the Syndicate. Seems like a good way to get information _and_ cash, if we play our cards right."

Iggy pulled the door closed behind her. "All right. Uh. How's Shaundi, um…?"

Pierce sucked his teeth as he turned over the engine, the radio blurping into life, apparently halfway through a weather report. "She's taking this thing with Gat pretty hard."

He started to back the Neuron out of the garage, and Iggy took advantage of the opportunity to turn her head away, glaring at the shabby clapboard houses and brown brick buildings that fringed the road.

"You think it's easy for me?"

"I know," Pierce said, craning to check the space behind him, "but you're always pissed off. Our girl's not as crazy as you."

Iggy leaned back to grab the Kobra—not the greatest gun in the world, but what she was sticking with until she could get a replacement for her Shepherd—from the floor of the backseat. She frowned up at Pierce from her contorted position.

"What? Who the fuck says I'm always pissed off?"

He laughed as she straightened up, and swung the Neuron into the right lane, heading towards the downtown district. Iggy stashed the gun beside her seat—she needed a new shoulder holster sometime fucking soon, this wasn't practical—and pulled out her new phone, investigating the maps and GPS apps as she tried to work out where the hell they were, and where they were heading.

Pierce tuned the radio to the classical station as he drove; Iggy didn't comment. She didn't get into that shit as much as he did, but she didn't mind it, and she certainly wasn't going to say anything right then, because it would only have added weight to the argument she was always pissed about something, which was complete fucking bullshit.

He gave her a sidelong look as he drove, and Iggy arched an eyebrow. "What?"

"Hey… how long were you rolling with Gat, anyway?"

Iggy shrugged. Again with the talking about Johnny. Everybody wanted to; everybody wanted to make her do it. They all needed to, she supposed. He was there with every breath… the fucking elephant in the room, looking at them from behind his sunglasses, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, not saying a damn word. Not accusing her of anything. She didn't need him to, when she could do it so effectively herself.

"Long time," Iggy said, forcibly pushing those stupid, crazy thoughts out of her head. No Johnny. No elephants. Gat was gone… and she better get fucking used to it. "He was around when I first joined the Saints."

Pierce chuckled, swinging the Neuron easily out past a queue of traffic at the lights, ignoring the horns of irate drivers as he overtook them. "Shit, what was he like back then?"

Iggy smiled, watching the queue of five o'clock commuters tail out in the rearview mirror. "Fucking. Crazy. And we all loved him for it."

Pierce shook his head, still smiling wistfully. "Yeah… gonna miss that motherfucker, huh?"

The weak sunlight picked at the brick and metal of Steelport's crowded landscape. Iggy squinted out of the window, trying to count the differences between here and Stilwater—the familiar chains of stores, the brands on billboards, the same foul-mouthed, pushy pedestrians—and trying to get a feel for the city. Her stomach rumbled; she hadn't eaten since the breakfast burrito that morning, but she wasn't much interested in the idea of food.

"Yeah," she said quietly, her face still turned to the window. "Yeah, we are. Now… where the fuck is this building?"


	4. Chapter 4

**4. My Little Eye**

* * *

Matt looked dubiously at the screens in front of Loren's conference table. All of them showed muted newscasts: a cavalcade of chaos and fire, interspersed with solemn-faced reporters and coloured banners running beneath them, carrying notes and tallies of the carnage. The National Guard depot was still burning, hours after the robbery, and several incidents—in the form of explosive drone strikes from above—had hit the same area of the city, causing widespread panic and, this being Steelport, opportunistic looting.

The reflections of the TV reports danced on the shiny black surface of the table, which was polished to a near-mirror shine. Well, it was a series of desks, really, arranged in an extended triangle shape in the centre of the large, understatedly elegant room. Almost everything in the office had that sleek, minimalistic look about it. Mr. Loren seemed to think it made things look more expensive although, to Matt, it just made the place feel empty and rather uncomfortable.

He cleared his throat, looking down at the patch of desk in front of him, and feeling unsure of what to do with his hands. He was always worried about leaving fingerprints on the perfect mirror-black surface. He wondered idly if there was a team of cleaners who came in at various points during the day to wipe it all down. Funny, because the only people Matt ever saw in the building were Morningstar. You could always spot them, even without the little enamel badges that Mr. Loren believed were a more tasteful alternative to the vulgar business of gang colours. Pink stars for Morningstar (though many of them did flag red in their clothing, too), green stars for Killbane's people, and Decker blue for his, though frankly very few Deckers actually wore them. Matt had pinned his to the lapel of his custom Christopher Valkirie jacket out of courtesy—and he was bright enough to know when politeness was sensible—but the symbol held no meaning for him.

He looked carefully at his employer as the news reports played on, bathing the surface of the table in fire.

"Um, forgive me for saying so, sir, but… it, er, it doesn't seem as if the Saints have, uh… 'fled the battle' just yet."

Loren glanced sharply at him, the sardonic quality of that aquiline profile not entirely diminished by the black eye and bloody bandages. Matt was dying to know how badly the Saints had kicked his arse up on that plane, but he was well aware it was probably more than his life was worth to ask. They certainly hadn't "fled" as Mr. Loren had confidently predicted they would try to do once they fell to earth.

In fact, in Matt's opinion, blowing up part of a National Guard complex and absconding with the contents of its warehouse was about as far from fleeing anything (except possibly pursuit) as one could get. All right, nobody had categorically _stated_ that the Saints were responsible, but the facts were indisputable.

So far, Killbane had failed. His Luchadores hadn't even found the Saints, despite the fact the Boss should have been right under his nose. This was the reason Matt had found himself summoned in person to Loren's office and, given that Killbane was not present at this particular meeting—something which Matt was intensely grateful for—it was easy to feel rather smug about things.

"You think I underestimate them, Mr. Miller," Loren observed, not dignifying Matt's jibe with either acknowledgement or response.

A cigarette—one of those horrible-smelling European ones, dark as ditchwater—smouldered in the Belgian's lean, elegant fingers, a single flake of ash falling to the red scarf he wore draped around his neck. He flicked it away, and brought the cigarette to his lips.

"They… certainly have a flair for the dramatic," Matt said, his gaze shifting to the screens again. "A cement mixer, wasn't it?"

Mr. Loren exhaled tersely, a plume of smoke slipping from between his lips. Matt didn't care for the smell of it, though at least the air con in here was turned up high enough to filter out the worst, even if it did make the room feel cold.

"Buffoonery," he said dismissively, tapping ash into a shiny black glass ashtray that stood in the centre of his shiny black desk. "They know nothing. Only thuggish violence and idiotic displays."

Matt thought of the ATM camera feed, and nodded. "Yes… but, given that we don't know where they are…."

This was a sore point. Matt was fairly sure they shouldn't have been so difficult to track down, but the Saints seemed to have disappeared. Clearly, they were laying low somewhere, most likely in Steelport's suburbs, which were so fragmented and decayed that it was virtually impossible to keep decent track of anything. The Syndicate controlled so much of the prostitution and drug trade in the city that Mr. Loren didn't consider it worth their time to pay too much attention to the regular cycle of meth labs and cheap hookers operating out in the arse end of town. Besides, cracking down—pun totally intended—on those disorganised elements gave the police something to do, which also worked in the Syndicate's favour. Thus, the illusion of balance was preserved. Up until now, there hadn't been any real disadvantages to the system.

"We will soon know," Loren said, pulling on his cigarette and flaring his nostrils like an angry maiden aunt. "I have a job for you, Mr. Miller. A particularly sensitive matter of surveillance and logistical coordination."

"Right." Matt nodded again. That didn't sound too bad. As long as it was over by nine, because he had a date. "What, er…?"

Mr. Loren smiled. It was not a happy smile: rather, the grimly prepared gritting of teeth in the face of something that was going to be messy, but ultimately satisfying. A bit like extreme paintball, Matt thought.

"The building on Montgomery Boulevard, near the park. It is one of the properties you have wired for surveillance, yes?"

Matt racked his memory. The Morningstar had a lot of properties downtown, where influential clients were wined and dined. Said clients had very definite expectations regarding their privacy, so it was important that the buildings were regularly swept for bugs—certain intelligence agencies had the most irritating habit of trying to listen in—and, if he was doing _that_ anyway, Mr. Loren had always encouraged Matt to be creative. This extended to making sure the buildings were wired for sound and visuals, which afforded the Syndicate the privilege of certain… insurance policies… on their clients, should they ever be needed. The tricky part was making sure no one knew they were being watched, but Matt always enjoyed a challenge.

"The penthouse? Yes."

"There is a party there tonight. I envisage that there may be… uninvited guests."

"Ah. You think the Saints will try to… to what? Break in? Or—"

Loren took another pull on his cigarette. "Oh, I think they will try to do something _memorable_, Mr. Miller. And I want you to make sure it ends with a bang."

Nonplussed, Matt frowned. "Well, if we can find out where they've been hiding—"

"It does not matter," Loren snapped. "Why waste time looking for them when we can draw them out? I have made sure this _soirée _has been well publicised, and I do not think our… friends… will miss the opportunity to invite themselves. We will have them just where we want them."

He reached into the inner pocket of his exquisitely tailored jacket, and drew out a slip of paper with what looked like a phone number written on it, along with a series of numerical codes. Matt sighed inwardly. After all the trouble he'd taken to set up the secure network, the phone, the tablet… every gadget imaginable, and the old man _still_ insisted on writing things down on paper. It was unbelievable.

Loren pushed the paper across the desk. "You will call this gentleman. His name is Anton. As we speak, he is planting several significant charges throughout the building."

Matt coughed, almost choking on his own saliva. "What? Wait, you've… you've put a bomb under there? But what about—"

Loren held up a hand, calmly hushing him. "Please, Mr. Miller. It is merely a contingency. If the Saints should make an appearance and not immediately find themselves, shall we say, removed from the premises with _extreme_ vigour, then it may become necessary for a more… forceful effort."

"You're going to blow up the building," Matt repeated numbly. "If they get inside."

Loren shrugged elegantly and took another pull on his cigarette, exhaling the smoke in a slow pool of vapour. "I doubt it will come to this, but I do not wish to waste any more time. We have bigger fish to fry, do we not, Mr. Miller? This is why I will require you to monitor the situation. You already have cameras throughout the building. These are the codes to begin the detonation sequence. You will liase with Anton; he will explain the positioning of the devices. You will know, if the moment comes, what you must do. And you will do it, yes?"

Matt's pulse quickened. He was sure he could feel it skittering under his skin. "But, the party… all those people. They're Syndicate clients, a-and the place will be full of Morningstar, and—"

Loren looked impassively at him; that tired, jaded look, as if he thought Matt was a bloody child. The Belgian knocked another little nub of ash off the end of his cigarette, arching his grey brows, even though the movement clearly pulled painfully at the wounds on his face, making him wince.

"That, Mr. Miller, is precisely why it is a last resort. I believe we can confidently expect our people to dispatch the Saints if they dare to show their faces. However… if the worst comes to the worst… well, imagine what the media will say." He held up one hand, tracing the pattern of hypothetical headlines in the air. "'Third Street Saints attack private party with stolen bomb. Building destroyed by murderous street gang.' Although they will no longer be a street gang, of course. They will be terrorists. _Dead _terrorists. We will have the evidence of this, and those who remain will be of no consequence to us."

Matt nodded slowly. The TV news channels had gone to their respective commercials; the screens were full of adverts for local businesses, and the brutally flashing logos heralding the new season of Professor Genki's S.E.R.C., coming soon (also a proud sponsor of Channel 12).

He'd never been asked to directly kill people before. Certainly not a whole building full of them. Oh, it wasn't that he was frightened, or morally outraged or anything… the Saints _did_ have to be stopped, and Matt had to admit that this was a clever plan. Ruthless, but very clever. Besides, it wasn't as if he hadn't been in situations where people had died before. In fact, he'd been personally responsible for arranging a number of helicopter and car crashes that had taken out the potential assassins Mr. Loren kept him around to dodge. And there was that time with the molotovs and the police motorbike, and that wasn't even mentioning the people whom Matt had completely annihilated in cyberspace.

When it came down to it, destroying someone's career—taking their whole life away from them, brick by brick—was fundamentally more personal than putting a gun in their mouth… or so he liked to think. And he wasn't _scared_ of killing. He preferred not getting actual brain matter splattered all over him, and so he was perfectly comfortable with never actually having done the deed in the flesh, so to speak, but… he wasn't afraid. You couldn't be, in this life.

An entire building, though. That was a _lot_ of people. And, all right, probably by the point Mr. Loren was talking about—the point, if it came, when the battle was lost—the Saints would already have cut a bloody swathe through things, and there would have been more than enough civilian casualties to start with… inasmuch as anyone there would actually be a civilian, unless you counted strippers… but… it was still a hell of a thing to ask.

Mr. Loren cleared his throat delicately, looking at Matt through his swollen eye as he tapped a thumb rhythmically against the butt of his cigarette. "Are you all right, Mr. Miller?"

Matt swallowed hard. "Um. Yes. Yes, thank you. Er…."

"This will not be a problem, I trust?"

Matt looked down at the slip of paper still sitting on the table before him. He reached out, taking it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger, then forcing himself to man up and fold his hand around it. There were always going to be unpleasant jobs that needed to be done. It was the nature of the game. And he wouldn't be doing anything that was unnecessary. After all, if it happened, it would happen because of the Saints. It would be _their_ fault. It was already their fault it was necessary. It was all on them, really.

"No, sir," he said, tucking the paper carefully into his pocket. "Not a problem at all. The, um, the surveillance feeds should suffice. If it's possible, it might be wise to locate a few extra cameras around the entry points to the building… service elevators, uh, fire exits… things like that. I'll get patched in on feeds from across the street, too, maybe traffic cameras in the immediate area. We can be on them before they get there."

Loren smiled. "Excellent. I am pleased to know I can rely on you, Mr. Miller. Always the strategic thinker."

Matt blinked, momentarily flustered by the compliment. He was, of course. Strategic. And brilliant. And, out of all the people on the planet he could have chosen to head this side of operations, Mr. Loren had picked _him_, recognising his skill, his talent… his potential.

"Um. Thank you, sir."

This was where it started. If he squinted, he was pretty sure he could see the rest of his life stretching out ahead of him, glittering with possibilities.

He was going to have to reschedule his date, though. Damn.

_**~o~O~o~**_

Courtney lived just on the north edge of Burns Hill, where the suburbs stopped and the industrial wasteland started. From the top floor of her house, you could see the cooling towers of the old reactor, which were lit up in Decker blue at night to show everybody who owned Stanfield… apart from on her birthday, when they'd turned yellow, because it was her favourite colour.

She didn't really go by Courtney anymore; she was "Court" now, or "LadyKaos" on her photography website. Sometimes "Kourt of Kaos", which Matt thought sounded like a rather wanky band name, but he never said that aloud.

It was about five in the afternoon, Assemblage 23 was playing from her iPod, and he was sitting on her bed—all right, floor-level futon, which was covered with a cheap, blurry Indian print throw in a deeply unpleasant shade of beigey yellow—watching her put in her dread falls. It was a lovely view… but a shame about the constant stream of complaining.

"It's not fair! I don't want to go on my own!" she groused for about the fifth time, bent over in front of the large wall-mounted mirror, fingers tugging and snapping at the elastic with which she was trying to fasten the brightly coloured artificial locks to the two buns of her natural hair that jutted from the top of her head.

The dread falls were about eighteen inches long: heavy, thick, and composed mostly of tubular pieces of bright blue foam, old Ethernet cables, and braided bits of fake hair dyed in a vibrant array of Manic Panic blues and violets. They were impressive, Matt had to admit, and the overall effect was stunning.

He opened his mouth, preparing to point out that she wouldn't _be_ on her own, because they'd been planning to meet a bunch of her friends at the club anyway… but she was busy being cross with him, so he didn't say anything to interrupt.

She straightened up, carefully flipping her DIY cyberlox back and glaring critically into the mirror as she adjusted the way they fell around her face. Her own hair was dyed raven black, the same shade as his—an evening in with a couple of jars of cream colourant and the extended cuts of _Nyte Blayde, _Season 3 on DVD had been immense fun—and her fringe was trimmed in a perfectly straight, blunt line halfway down her forehead.

Court's eyebrows were heavily plucked, suggesting a certain element of permanent surprise, but she raised them even further as she fiddled with the thick black headband that hid the join between her natural hair and the twin falls of chaos fountaining off her head.

"I just can't believe you're doing this to me. It fucking _sucks_, Matt. Fucking hell!"

He shifted uncomfortably on the futon and shrugged. "It's really not my fault. I can't help it if—"

"I don't care!" she said, sneering at herself in the mirror, then narrowing her eyes as she looked over her reflection's shoulder, scowling at him.

She'd finished her makeup. Pale skin, gothic eyes with crystal-studded lashes, lips a brighter, more pearlescent blue than his, and dark blue crystal studs twinkling in her nostril and snakebite piercings. She wore a black high-neck top with black fingerless gloves that reached above her elbows and had tiny white skulls printed on them, a dark green miniskirt, thigh-high black-and-white striped stockings, and big, heavy, black over-the-knee boots that bristled with buckles.

She looked fantastic. Once she got under the blacklights at _The P3ll37 _and started dancing, she was going to look unreal… and he really, really wished he could be there to see it.

"It's not like we didn't plan this," Court grumbled, continuing to give him that reproachful stink-eye via the mirror. "If doing stuff with me is less important than what your _boss_ says…."

Matt winced. "It's not really like that. The thing is—"

She turned from the mirror, the artfully positioned dreads spinning with the movement and falling against her shoulders like knotted whips as she struck a pose of cruel parody. "'Ooh, I'm a _hacktivist_, I don't have time for the petty bullshit of you nine-to-five braindead wageslaves! I live to create _anarchy_! Free information and an end to the censorship of government! But wait, what's that?'" Court put a blue-tipped finger to the side of her mouth and bugged her eyes in a pin-up girl caricature of surprise. "'Oh, no! My _boss_ wants me to work late. Well, gee willickers—'"

"Oh, come on, I have never said that in my _life_!"

She scowled afresh, her fake lashes getting close to knotting. "'—gee-fucking-_willickers_, I guess I'd better just drop _everything_, because I'm a good little boy and I do what I'm told.' Does that sound familiar? Huh?"

Matt frowned petulantly. "It is not remotely like that. Just because I can't tell you about it—"

"Oh my god, right, yeah… your super-secret bullshit, Matt, I forgot."

Hands on her hips, Court glared hotly at him, and he tried not to think about how good she looked when she was angry. She was also intensely annoying when she was like this, but Matt was prepared to forgive her that… or, at least, parts of him were. Outside, under the ambient pulse of Court's music, cars rumbled up and down the street, and a couple of children sounded as if they were throwing stones at the vehicles. A man yelled, and the kids squealed and ran, footsteps thudding on concrete. There was a lot of life in this neighbourhood.

He did _want_ to tell her about what he did in more detail. She knew about the Deckers—she thought it was cool, and she liked coming up to the reactor and hanging out there—and she knew a little bit about the Syndicate. Not everything. Never everything, because that would have been dangerous. She thought the work Matt did for Loren was basically internet security. It wasn't her fault; those were the terms he'd explained it in, and Court wasn't a hacker. Her thing was building, the actual nuts and bolts of computers—or ports and chips, maybe.

She could put together a system that would shame the latest top-of-the-line beast, from parts, in less than twenty minutes. If you gave her a couple of days, she could also throw in the most incredible looking custom case… but she couldn't code to save her life, and she wasn't interested in learning.

Court said it made them a good match: she was all about the hardware, and Matt was software. There was a joke in there somewhere about him wanting to load his hard drive into her bay but, knowing Court, he suspected she'd have responded with a 90s-style "3.5 inch floppy" jibe, despite the fact she'd probably never seen one. A floppy disk, obviously. Not… oh, god. She certainly hadn't seen _his_, anyway. They hadn't been going out long, and the perfect opportunity had yet to present itself. Or… well, something like that, anyway. It was a matter of timing.

"Look, love," Matt wheedled, trying to scramble up from the futon in the most dignified manner possible, while doing his best to turn on every last ounce of British charm he could muster, "if I could tell you about it, I would, but I can't. I said I'm sorry. At least you've got other people to go with."

"Don't wanna go with other people." Court pouted. "Wanted to go with you. I'm wearing your fuckin' colours and everything."

"I know. And you look amazing. I'm gutted too." Matt reached out tentatively and took her hand. "And I'll make it up to you, I promise. I really will."

She didn't pull away, kick him on the shin, or swear very much. She just let out a soft "fucking hell" and looked slightly less angry, which he supposed was a win… and a virtue of Britishing intensely at American girls, especially when combined with the power of his big blue eyes and a suitably sad-puppy-dog expression. He squeezed her fingers.

"If you really don't want to go, you could always come by the reactor instead, hang out while I'm busy. Maybe pick up a pizza or something?"

Court wrinkled her nose. "Fuck that. I'm not gonna sit around and watch you stare at a screen. I'm still going out. I just wish you could tell your boss to shove it… unless this is, like, some intense world crisis shit or something."

Matt smiled uncomfortably. Whatever happened tonight, it was fairly certain _someone's_ world was going to be in crisis.

"You're probably right," he said. "You'd hate it. I'm being selfish. C'mon… we've still got time to get something to eat, then I'll give you a lift there. Sound good?"

Court's azure mouth twisted into a reluctant smile, and she leaned in to peck him gently on the lips. There was always a makeout embargo once she had her makeup on. "I guess. Sushi? You're buying."

Matt shrugged. He didn't care for the whole raw-fish-and-sticky-rice thing, but if it got him off the hook with Court, he didn't mind paying for her. One of the perks of working for Mr. Loren was having plenty of cash in his pocket… although it didn't make him feel that much better for missing out on a night of liberated fun.

Court broke away and went to snatch up her jacket—a gift: black leather Valkirie, like his, with a Decker blue trim—and Matt watched her fondly, trying ever so hard not to think about the explosives lodged under the downtown penthouse. If that thing went up tonight, chances were the blast would be heard in Stanfield.

"You're not planning on going on anywhere after, are you?" he asked, as she slipped the jacket on.

Court raised her heavily arched brows. "Why? You jealous or something now?"

"No! I just… wondered. You're not planning to go anywhere near Sunset Park at all?"

She pulled a face. "Eww. Wine bars and shitty nightclubs. No. We might hit _Moulin Gothique _later, if the bouncers are off the side door. Why?"

Matt shook his head. "Oh, no… just… curious. I'll be thinking about you. That's all."

"Huh." Court eyed him suspiciously as she snatched up her iPod, loading her pockets up because she hated carrying a purse. "That's… nice."

Matt smiled, and hoped it looked genuine.

_**~o~O~o~**_

Later that evening, he was wishing fervently that he was out with Court and her friends, drinking horrible shots and losing himself in a pounding bass beat and overdone strobe lighting.

Matt was ensconced at his battlestation, multiple extra monitors hooked up and half a triple cheese pizza congealing in its greasy box beside his double-extra-large cherry-flavoured Joe. He'd texted Court, but she hadn't replied; he hadn't really expected she would. She was probably enjoying herself.

This part of the job was monotonous. Matt felt slightly weird about that, because he was sure it shouldn't feel quite so dull. His screens showed him the interior of the downtown penthouse, feed after feed split into squares patchworked over the monitors: corridors, doorways, offices, storerooms, and then the glitzier foyers and upper rooms in which the party was being held. He watched Morningstar staff criss-crossing busily—all crisply, neatly dressed, with that same slightly supercilious expression they all seemed to share—and watched the bartenders and the girls hired for the evening's entertainment prepare to receive their guests. The audio feeds were all turned down; he didn't really want to listen to the shitty music they were playing, or hear the plethora of tired banter and mindless chitchat that would undoubtedly ensue.

Matt was used to the sense of voyeurism that came from watching stuff like this. He rather liked it, though not in a getting-off-on-watching way as much as a being-omniscient-and-knowing-everything-without-anyone-knowing-he-knew kind of way. _Cyber god_, he reminded himself, wondering as he watched the faces of bored-looking men in suits with little pink enamel pins on their lapels—or of dancers helping each other with their pasties and fishnets—whether he was going to end up being a benevolent deity, or the sort of god who rained fiery destruction down on the entire district.

He sucked cheese grease off his thumb and flicked glumly through the next cycle of displays.

Eventually, the party got going. Guests arrived in small, dark helicopters, and in limos with blacked-out windows. They were a diverse bunch: but for a few fat, red-cheeked, middle-aged men who seemed to fit every stereotype Matt could possibly have imagined, most of them wouldn't have looked out of place if he'd seen them in a store, or walking down the street. All right, the nicer kind of store, and maybe only the New Baranec streets where you usually saw wealthy high-rollers wandering in the neon glow of the casino strips… but the point was that nothing about them screamed "organised criminals".

There was one guy with a scar running down his cheek who did look worryingly like a Bond villain—Matt decided to assume the man had a Russian accent, and started making up a backstory for him in his head—and a couple of ridiculously good-looking young Arab men who headed straight for the strippers. Certainly, none of them were anything like the Saints, and there was no sign of _them _anywhere.

As the champagne flowed, the music throbbed, and the building's entire upper floor and rooftop suites devolved into one flowing ribbon of opulent hedonism, Matt was beginning to think Mr. Loren had been wrong.

He slouched back in his chair, using his toes to twist it gently side-to-side in an attempt to swizzle away his boredom. He'd finished the pizza, drunk the rest of his coke, and was now trying to pretend to himself that he didn't really need to pee, just in case anything happened while he was gone… however unlikely that seemed. There were girls gyrating, people drinking, dancing, and generally making merry. One set of feeds showed the pulsing central rooms, replete with Mr. Loren's rather ostentatious taste in neo-classical sculpture—ugly, but admittedly impressive—and a large collection of hideous but expensive modern art. The lights were down low, and the plate glass windows gave panoramic views over Steelport, reducing the city to a prickling sparkle of lights and silhouettes against the darkness. Out on the rooftop, where a large pool shimmered under the red-and-pink lights, the party had spilled out to the terraces, bringing more dancers and more revellers. Someone had already jumped in the pool with their clothes on, demonstrating that—however much money was involved—it was always _that_ kind of party.

Inside, Matt had already watched the ridiculously good-looking Arabs seduce (or possibly just offer money to) one of the strippers, and then retire with her to a bedroom. On the white-upholstered sofas in the penthouse's main lounge, a handful of guests were enjoying dances from some of the other girls, while the feeds that covered the various service corridors, back rooms, and elevators showed a couple of other patrons—and the odd Morningstar—being somewhat less selective in their choice of amorous venue.

Matt rolled his eyes at the couple that evidently thought they were being oh so very edgy by fucking in the service elevator. That was just plain rude. The bar staff needed to bring fresh booze up through there and, sure enough, the camera that covered the kitchen-side door downstairs showed him an extremely irate Morningstar mashing the call button repeatedly, a crate of vodka waiting at his feet. Matt sniggered and shook his head.

"Dear me. Not your night, is it, sunshine?"

He frowned slightly at the realisation he'd started talking to the camera feeds—a sign of extreme tedium, if not insanity—and whizzed his chair round again, lifting his feet off the floor to see if he could make a complete 360 degree turn. He could, but it wasn't as much fun as he'd hoped.

_**~o~O~o~**_

Typically, it was just as Matt returned from the pee break he eventually couldn't deny needing that he saw the first sign of the Saints. Several nondescript cars had begun circling the blocks surrounding the building; he wouldn't have noticed them if it wasn't for the fact they kept coming back, and kept moving as a pack. He sent a brief text message to Anton, alerting him of the possibility they might soon have company, and settled back to waiting… feeling somewhat less comfortable than before, despite the empty bladder.

His fingers moved deftly over the keyboard, cycling through the available cameras, watching and trying to predict any possible moves. If they tried to come up through the building—as presumably they would—they were going to discover the main elevator was locked. There were Morningstar all over the side corridors, stairways, and service elevators, so that meant the Saints' initial assault should be easily nipped in the bud… unless they were packing serious firepower. It depended what they'd nabbed in the armoury job, Matt supposed.

He flicked back up to the top floor feeds, frowning as he saw another helicopter coming in above the building. What was this, a latecomer?

His eyes widened in horror as he watched a figure leap from the aircraft, descending gracefully on a chute right into the centre of the packed roof terrace. It was only as the partygoers started to panic, and the figure rose up from among the screaming, running crowd that Matt managed to shake himself out of his frozen stare.

"Shit, shit, _shit_…!" He tapped frantically at the keyboard, jamming his earpiece back in as he tried to patch a call through to the Morningstar lieutenant. "Anton? The Saints are on the roof! No, on the bloody _roof_!"

Matt stifled a yelp as the feed showed the chaos the Saints' leader was causing… and he was certain it _was _her. He recognised the dark purple rockabilly hair, though she wore heavy black cargos, black gloves, and a wine-red leather bomber jacket with a sheepskin collar… and she was so fucking calm. There was something almost eerie about it.

People were running, pushing… falling into the rooftop pool. One man—a client, wearing an expensive looking suit and wire-framed glasses—pulled a gun from inside his jacket, but the Boss saw it before he got a chance to fire. She merely swung her arm out a few degrees and squeezed off a shot, and Matt winced as the man fell. Fucking headshot. And she didn't even break stride. _Shit_. In his ear, the overlapping yelled commands from the Morningstar com channel Anton was using scrambled and echoed, and Matt cycled quickly through the feeds.

"Saints coming up on the front," he barked into the mic, watching the pack of cars coming around again on the road outside. What the hell were they playing at? Back on the rooftop, Matt had to switch cameras quickly to follow the Boss as she made for the interior of the penthouse.

He fumbled to turn up his audio feeds, but all he could hear was screaming. The Morningstar in the building were breaking out their guns, but they'd been set for an assault from downstairs, and the Saints' leader was making quickly for the penthouse's office.

It took Matt a moment to work out what she meant to do. In the midst of the guests scrambling for escape, some of them were stupid enough to rush at her, thinking they could overpower a single intruder. She cracked the butt of her gun across one man's face, grabbing him by the throat as he sagged, and hauling him around to use as a shield while she turned, squeezing off three shots in quick succession that took down two armed Morningstar who sprung at her from a side door. She dropped her bleeding human shield, bringing her boot down to stomp hard on the back of his shoulder as he tried to get out of her way, then she reached inside her jacket, bringing out something small, dark, and egg-shaped.

"Oh, _shit_… she's got grenades!" Matt yelled across the com channel, watching in horror as the Boss pulled the pin, hurled the grenade, and ran for the penthouse office.

She looked like she was smiling.

The force of the explosion had Matt ripping his earpiece out and swearing; everything was still ringing in his ears as the camera feed showed the vast picture windows at the front of the central lounge blowing outwards. The big, ugly sculpture in the middle of the room wobbled, one arm breaking off and flying free into the tornado of splintered furniture and broken glass.

His fingers felt slow and unresponsive, the panic running though him like ice as he tried to access the office computer. It would have been so much better if the entire Syndicate used a single system. Matt had tried to make Mr. Loren understand that, but the old man hadn't listened. He fumbled through the access passwords, but he was running behind. He'd barely patched into the system before he could see that _she_ was in there. Lumbering around, obviously looking for the elevator codes or the system locks that controlled the access to the front of the building… she clearly wasn't a hacker.

Matt started to take remote control of the system—at least the Morningstar security protocols allowed him that, even if they weren't patched in to his vastly superior network—but he could already see the access timestamp that told him she'd got what she needed.

"Fuck!"

He kicked at the leg of his desk in frustration as the feed showed the Boss sprint from the office to the elevator control. Her lips were moving and she had one finger pressed to her ear; he guessed she was repeating the code to whoever she had on the line. Looked like the damn Saints were organised, anyway.

In fact, they were organised enough for that moment to be the one they launched their assault on the front doors. Matt saw it coming: about eight cars, not including the ones that had been circling before, screamed up to the turning circle out front, with a handful of Morningstar vehicles in pursuit. A dark blue Infuego rammed straight through the glass doors that fronted the building and, in a hail of gunfire, armed Saints poured through the wreckage… heading straight into the building. Not the side doors, not the service entrances. Straight in through the front, scattering debris and glass like snowflakes.

Everything was chaos after that. Matt had Anton screaming on the com channel, demanding information he couldn't possibly retrieve—how many, where were they, what hardware were they packing, and where were they going?—and several of his camera feeds had been taken out by bullets, small explosions, or a number of the fires that now burned throughout the building.

The remaining Morningstar clients were pouring out of the place like rats, especially once the police sirens wailed… not that Steelport's boys in blue intended to get too involved. That much was obvious from the way two patrol cars parked up down the street, the officers taking cover behind them and then, well, _staying_ there. Matt assumed Loren had given the chief his instructions for tonight: keep quiet and keep out of the way.

He blew his fringe out of his eyes, still frantically cycling between the camera feeds and relaying everything he had on the com. It didn't look good, and it was looking worse by the second. Matt didn't understand what had happened.

The Saints must have had someone on the inside. They _must_ have done. They'd known not just where to go, but precisely where and how to get the information. The elevator lock, the computer system, the layout of the penthouse: everything. Sure, Loren had intended to bait them with information, but this was _not_ what was supposed to have happened… and then Matt's stomach knotted, because he knew what was coming next.

"Blow the fucking building! Blow it!" Anton yelled in his ear, and Matt muttered a series of cusses under his breath.

"All right, all right…! Fuck…."

His hands shook a little as he entered the codes. In his ear, he could hear Anton's heavy breathing as the man ran through the carnage, trying to get to the helipad and at least the possibility of escape before the whole place went up.

The video feeds showed smoke, fire… bodies. A lot of bodies, and a lot of people in purple. Matt wasn't sure where the Saints' leader had got to, but he knew it was going to be too much to hope that the bitch was dead.

He let out a long breath as the digital countdown finalised. Most of the charges were still intact and, with the damage the Saints had already caused, the building would probably go up like a tinderbox. Matt's mouth felt dry as he looked over the last of the camera feeds and saw a couple of strippers cowering behind a broken pillar. One had a large gash on her head; blood had dripped down her skimpy bikini, spattering her augmented cleavage. Both girls were crying.

He shut the feed off, trying to ignore the ball of discomfort in his stomach.

Matt pulled out his earpiece and tossed it onto the desk. Fuck this. Fuck the Saints. He slid his hands across his face, blocking out the camera feeds and the flickering little panel with the countdown numbers steadily ticking to zero, and just let himself hide in the darkness behind his palms. What a bloody mess. It felt real now; much more real than it had when he'd thought the Saints were just a bunch of psychos, and when he'd been able to believe that the Morningstar could send them packing.

Well, that hadn't turned out so well, had it? He let out a long, slow breath, let his hands slide from his face, and pulled up a call window, dialling Loren's secure number. Someone was going to have to tell the old man about this… and he wasn't going to be pleased.

Matt tried to swallow past the dry, scratchy feeling in his throat, and took one last glance at the numbers flicking down to detonation. Less than eight minutes. His last exterior camera feed showed more Saints piling into the building. Obviously, they thought they'd won. They were eager to see their prize… and, very soon, they were going to blown to pieces.


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N: **Thanks to those reading & reviewing – very much appreciated! Still several more chapters to lay in before Iggy and Matt meet face-to-face, in order to incorporate a bunch of stuff that will become important later, but stay tuned for more violence, swearing, and things that go kaboom. :)_

* * *

**5. We're Going to Need a Pool Boy**

* * *

Iggy swore under her breath as she ran through the smoke-clouded, debris-strewn penthouse, making for the roof access to the helipad. It stood to fucking reason, didn't it? Loren had _meant_ this. He'd wanted them to hit the building, just so he could blow them sky-fucking-high.

Well, fuck him. Saints didn't die that easy.

She hurdled the mess by the blown-out windows—dead Morningstar and a bunch of their party guests, all covered with pieces of glass like late winter frost—and ran for the staircase. The chopper Shaundi had spotted taking off was already rising up against the glittering skyline, turning sharply as whatever asshole Morningstar was trying to ditch nosed it towards… where was he going? West?

"Fuck," Iggy muttered, her feet slamming on the metal grating as she ran for one of the small Oppressors left on the pad.

She hadn't flown a chopper in a while, and it wasn't like she'd ever officially learned how… at least not in any legal sense. There was no time to familiarise herself with the details of the craft's layout, though; she jammed her feet onto the pedals, grabbed the collective, and started to up the throttle. The rotors thunked and whirred, and Iggy gritted her teeth, chanting a small and expletive-laden prayer to the god of choppers to get this fucker into the air.

The Oppressor rose off the helipad, shuddering violently. She coaxed it forward, higher and further, her gaze fixed on the fleeing Morningstar. As soon as he realised he was being followed, he started to dip and weave, trying to shake her off amid the tangle of the city's architecture.

"Oh, are you fucking serious?" Iggy eased the Oppressor's cyclic forward, pushing the chopper's acceleration as she tried to follow the asshole ahead of her… ideally without crashing into anything. "_¡Pinche pendejo!_"

Steelport was pretty from the air, though. She couldn't fail to notice that, even while she was concentrating on not falling out of the sky. The downtown area prickled with big-ass skyscrapers—some modern, some that regal-looking old-style kind—and the night was alive with so many lights. Billboards littered everything, and hoardings consumed whole sides of some buildings, the brightly coloured, flickering images blending in a seedy kaleidoscope that promised ass, violence, and as much party as you could handle.

Iggy was pretty sure, if she lived long enough, she was going to like this town.

"_Boss,_" Shaundi's voice crackled urgently in her ear. "_You know where that guy's going?"_

Iggy curled her lip. The thudding whir of the rotors was deafening, though she was still riding the high that had come with taking the penthouse. Everything tasted of sweat and blood, and her skin itched with the promise of victory. She wouldn't even feel the bruises until later.

"Working on it," she said, raising her voice enough to be heard above the chopper. "You got that place cleaned up yet, Shaundi?"

"_What do I look like, the damn maid?"_

Iggy grinned, kicking the chopper to the left a little too hard to stay on the Morningstar's tail. She glanced at the torque gauge and grimaced, forcing herself to ease back.

"Hey, Shaundi… I know you're pissed off at life right now, but do you have to take everything so literal?"

The sound of Shaundi grumbling in her ear made Iggy's smile widen even further.

"_We're sitting on a bomb here, and you're making jokes?"_

"See, there you go again!"

Iggy squinted as the Morningstar chopper headed out across the river, making for Stanfield. That stood to reason: the wharves and warehouses had plenty of places to land and hide, and they already knew Loren's people had operations there. Shaundi's ex's buddy said they shifted supplies through a moving company based in that part of town… a company Iggy already had on her shit list.

An alarm bleeped on the Oppressor's controls, and she winced, trying to keep the chopper straight as she bore down on the fleeing Morningstar. She wasn't going to get anything ticked off that list if this fucking thing ditched on her, and she hadn't got a clue what the damn gauges were telling her.

"_¡Chinga!_" She pulled up on the cyclic, working the pedals and wishing Pierce had been here to fly the fucking thing, because this was his deal, not hers. "_¡No mames! ¿Qué coño hago ahora?"_

"_Boss?"_ Shaundi crackled in her ear again, sounding worried. _"You got him?_"

"Working on it!" Iggy snapped, as the Oppressor dipped and juddered, taking her dangerously close to a couple of rooftops. "He's coming in on a warehouse by the docks. Don't worry, I got this."

"_Yeah, well, these things are on a coded timer. We got less than ten minutes, and I can't get everybody out!"_

Iggy gritted her teeth hard enough to make her jaw ache. The Morningstar chopper had landed; all she had to do was come down on the same roof, ideally without anything bursting into flames. "Okay, okay, I'll get the fucking code."

"_Nope, no codes. Just four wires: red, green, blue, and black."_

Shaundi sounded amazingly calm for someone about to be blown to bits, though Iggy knew her well enough to hear the fractures in her composure. She clamped down hard on every impulse she had to feel scared or panicked, or to think about what might happen in the next ten minutes. That was how you got through this shit: no thinking, just doing. After all, if she fucked this up, there _was_ no next ten minutes, not for her, and not for her crew.

Iggy could already see figures on the rooftop and—as she brought the Oppressor in overhead, easing past the ranks of power lines and the old coolant towers of disused factories—the telltale pinging noises of bullets hitting the chopper's underside let her know just how pleased they were to see her.

"You're getting caught up in details, Shaundi," she said, baring her teeth in a grim smile. "The point is, I'll find out how to disarm the fucking bomb. Okay?"

"_Well, if you could hurry it up—"_

"_¡Oye!_ On it!"

Iggy pulled the second-hand Kobra out of her new shoulder holster and picked off the nearest asshole with a gun and an attitude problem. As soon as she got close enough to the roof, bailing out of the Oppressor seemed easier than landing it, and had the added bonus of making the Morningstar panic like fucking children. It was nice of a couple of them to break her fall.

She rolled away—badly winded but with no time to worry about the fact she couldn't breathe—and part-crawled, part-scrambled the rest of the way to the access door, glad of the Kevlar vest and joint supports she wore beneath her clothes. The chopper's impact into the roof shook everything, shook her fucking teeth in her head, and Iggy was still half-deaf when she made it into the interior of the warehouse. Fucking place was a mess… fucking full of Morningstar, too. She assumed that's what they were. Fuckers shot at her, anyway.

"I don't have _time_ for this shit," Iggy panted, ducking behind a stack of crates to reload her poor, abused Kobra.

One good thing about the gun was its lightness; she'd stuck with it tonight for that reason, and it made for quick shooting as she took the Morningstar out, one by one. Not as clean as she'd have liked, but fast, and that mattered—especially after she felt the swift, searing sting of a shot graze her left arm. Fuck it… the jacket was new, too. Iggy shot the perpetrator—an Asian woman with a .22—in the throat by way of compensation, then sprinted past the prone bodies in pursuit of the fleeing lieutenant.

They weren't all dead, but hopefully none of the ones that were still alive were as tough, or as crazy, as Johnny. In Iggy's experience, the thing about putting bullets in people was that, even if you didn't take them out completely on the first shot, then—unless all you scored was a minor flesh wound or a quick scrape—they either had to be really pissed or paid an awful lot of money to get up again and let you take a second. He was the only guy she'd ever seen try to shake off getting seriously shot, and the only one halfway crazy enough to almost manage it. Most bangers were either smart enough to stay down, or angry enough that they didn't care if they died. Blood in, blood out… all that shit.

Iggy's lips thinned as she thought about Gat, and his face was in front of her as she raced down the metal staircase after the Morningstar asshole. He was making for the lower floors of the warehouse; she guessed they had cargo down there, maybe cars, too. Somewhere in the building, a fire alarm was going off… probably something to do with the chopper she'd crashed into their roof, Iggy supposed. Some people were so fucking sensitive.

She guessed Johnny would've laughed. She could imagine it: every little detail of his face, the stink of his cologne, his stupid motherfucking hair… the sound of his voice. She rounded the last part of the stairs and jumped over the railing, tackling the Morningstar lieutenant just before he reached a set of metal doors that presumably led down to street level.

Iggy landed on him from behind, and he cried out as something beneath her made a cracking noise. She dragged herself up—dragged _him_ up with her—giving him a little smack across the cheekbone with the butt of her pistol, just so he knew she was there.

She yelled at him to tell her how to defuse the bomb… or thought she did. What came out, muffled and echoing in the dank, brick-lined corridor, was something garbled and wordless. She realised how deaf she still was, and how fucking hard it was to breathe. He stared at her—wide-eyed, sweaty, blood trickling from a cut on his mouth—and, for a second, the guy looked like he was going to tell her to go to hell. Iggy pre-empted that very unwise idea by grabbing his neck and rushing him back into the nearest wall, slamming him so hard it knocked the breath from both of them. She brought the Kobra up to his face while his mouth was still open, the barrel of the gun directly level with his nose.

"Tell me how to stop the bomb, or I'll put a bullet in your fucking head!"

It occurred to her in the moment that followed, that—life being the unfair, ironic, cruel torrent of shit it usually was—she had no actual guarantee this asshole even _knew_ about the bomb, much less how to defuse it. Iggy felt a bitter smile creeping over her face at that thought: something halfway between amusement and outright fucked-up horror, because this whole thing could have been a big fucking waste of time. She guessed the grimace made her look that little bit scarier, because the Morningstar's throat bobbed in her grip.

"The r-red wire," he choked out. "Cut the red wire!"

"Huh." Iggy relaxed her fingers a little bit, taking the gun off him long enough to get Shaundi back on the line. Who knew? She'd always thought that shit was just for the movies. "Shaundi?"

"_Yeah, Boss?"_

"Shaundi, cut the red one."

The lieutenant drooped against the wall, turning a little limp as Iggy listened to Shaundi relay the instructions… and not be blown up. Relief hammered in her chest alongside the adrenaline; she wouldn't have put it past one of Loren's assholes to lie, just to see them all burn.

"_Damn it,"_ Shaundi breathed in her ear, her voice a little shaky with the sudden release of tension. _"I lost the fucking bet."_

Iggy let out a breath and, this time, her smile was genuine. "I'll be back soon," she promised, foregoing another dig about the cleanup.

The Morningstar lieutenant was too smart to have tried to move. He watched her with wide eyes, his lips slackly parted and his chest rising and falling with short, rapid breaths.

Iggy tilted her head to the side, giving him a long, slow look. She could feel his pulse humming under her hand, his throat warm through the leather of her glove. It got even faster when she pressed the Kobra's muzzle to his forehead, and she smelled the acrid tang of piss wafting up from between them. He got halfway through "please, don't" before she pulled the trigger, the impact of the shot reverberating up her arm.

She stepped back, letting the body fall and wiping her left hand on her pants. Everything still sounded kind of muffled, and the fire alarm was still blaring somewhere in the building. The meat-and-copper smell of blood crawled into her nose and throat, mixing with the burn of cordite, and she wiped the back of her gun hand across her face.

All that was left was to find out where the fuck she was, and how the fuck to get back to the penthouse.

_**~o~O~o~**_

Getting out of the warehouse wasn't that hard, despite the fire trucks and police cars that had shown up. The place seemed to be mostly to do with distribution—electronics, judging by the half-packed trucks in the bays at the side of the building—so presumably either a front for whatever else the Morningstar moved through here, or somewhere to hide their profits.

A handful of night-shift workers were around outside the open bays, mostly staring up at the roof and filming the burning carcass of the Oppressor on their phones, which was annoying the firefighters who were still trying to cordon off the area. A few cops had shown up; the on-site security guard was talking to them near one of the open bay doors.

Iggy knew what she must look like: limping, smoke-streaked, spattered with blood and with a bullet tear in her sleeve, there was no way she'd get past those assholes, and she really didn't want to have to shoot her way out. She didn't have the ammo for it, or the energy. She snuck round to the rear of the warehouse and slipped out of a side door, finding her way to a small parking lot.

Somebody had thoughtfully left a pretty nice Estrada parked near the wall. Iggy tugged off her gloves, holding them in her teeth as she crouched over the bike, groping for the ignition wiring under the handlebars. She yanked the plastic caps apart and pulled the wires free, her fingers feeling thick and clumsy now the immediate rush of adrenaline was starting to wear off.

"_Vamos nena,_" she muttered, the words muffled by her gloves as she bent and coaxed the wires into different connections, teasing them painstakingly and waiting, praying, for that telltale little _click_ from the engine. "_¡Ay, vamos! ¡Pinche chingadera! Vamos…."_

Finally, the Estrada lit up. Iggy let out a squeal of glee and pressed the ignition button, revelling in the thick purr of the engine turning over. She slung herself into the saddle, kicked the bike into gear, and rode out of the lot, giving the emergency services a nice, wide berth.

The ride back to the penthouse took fucking forever, mostly because she had to keep stopping to check the GPS map on her phone, and partly because she suddenly felt so goddamn tired. It had its pleasant moments, though… she liked feeling the cool night air on her face, with its slightly gritty, greasy texture, and she liked the way the lights from cars and buildings smeared themselves against the darkness. Everything mixed up, twirled together in the night and—for the first time in a long while—Iggy felt free. Alone, beholden to no one and constrained by nothing… except maybe the nagging pains gnawing at her body, and the ever-growing compulsion to fall over and sleep for a week.

It was late by the time she got back, but the centre of the downtown district was still lit up like some great, glittering carnival. Animated billboards twinkled, streetlights bathed everything in an artificial yellowish glow that made the sidewalk look almost chalky, and distant music drifted on the air.

The Saints' new crib was still a fucking mess, though the worst of it—except for the wrecked cars abandoned in the brick-paved forecourt—wasn't visible from the roadside. Iggy wasn't sure how the crew had handled the cops… presumably there _had_ been cops. She'd seen a couple of patrol cars shortly before she went for the chopper, but there had been a refreshing lack of SWAT teams and assholes with bullhorns. She guessed Loren either didn't pay big enough kickbacks for Steelport's PD to get involved in his turf wars, or that he paid sufficient to make sure they didn't.

Whatever. The important thing was that right now, right at this very second, it was quiet. No Morningstar—they must have retreated to lick their wounds—no cops, no TV people, and nobody else hanging around. The building looked secure, and that was a start.

Iggy left the Estrada outside, by one of the totalled Infuegos, then picked her way through the mangled doors and into the building's foyer. The lights still worked; that was something.

"Hey, Boss."

Three Saints sat behind the bullet-pocked porter's desk, a couple of beers and a few takeout cartons in front of them. One of them—a young black guy with thick dreads; his face was familiar, but Iggy wasn't sure of his name—raised his beer to her in a salute.

"You kicked _ass_, Boss. Lemme buzz you up."

Iggy managed a weary smile and a wave of her hand. She was pretty certain she'd been at the kid's canonisation, maybe about three months ago. One of Pierce's new prospects from Stilwater U. She'd been uncertain about tapping the student body for recruits, but with the Saints being a high-powered brand and all that shit now, it was hard to keep the little bastards out. She racked her brain for his name. She remembered him—nice jab and a good left hook—and it would be fucking embarrassing if she couldn't put a name to the fists, or the face.

Fuck, she was their leader, and tonight of all nights…! She'd asked them to bleed and die for the crew. Least she could do was remember who the fuck they were.

"Thanks, uh— Chris," Iggy said, managing to keep the note of jubilant relief out of her voice as her memory finally clicked into gear. She nodded at the other two, managing to get away with another smile and a loose "'sup?"

The kid looked appallingly thrilled that she knew who he was, and grinned widely as he punched in the access code that would let her upstairs. Iggy got herself to the elevator and leaned against its rear wall as the doors swished shut. There were ricochet marks on the interior, and a couple of bloodstains on the floor, but she was too tired to notice them with more than a passing glance.

_**~o~O~o~**_

Upstairs, everything was chaotic. There was a strange division between the total devastation—the broken glass, bloodstains, bullet holes, wrecked furniture and mangled bits of debris—and the members of the Row who now occupied the building. _They_ were taking the chance to rest, to kick back and seem surprisingly calm amid all this carnage.

Most of the salvageable furniture had Saints sitting on it, plenty of them patched up with dressings and bandages, and plenty more either grabbing a few minutes' sleep, or nursing something to eat or drink. A strong smell of fried rice permeated the penthouse, slightly at odds with the lingering stink of smoke and death.

"'Bout time you showed up, Boss!"

Iggy looked up at the sound of Pierce's voice, and shook her head incredulously as he crossed the ravaged lounge to greet her. She would never work out how the fuck he kept that white suit of his clean when everything around him was turning to shit… but he did.

She grabbed his outstretched hand, bumped in for a brief hug, and winced when he patted her arm.

"I gotta admit," she said, waving away his look of concern, "you picked a pretty nice place for the crew. What's the damage?"

Pierce's mouth twisted ruefully. "We got four in the hospital, three in the morgue."

Iggy winced. "Shit."

Sure, compared to how tonight could have gone down, those were good numbers, but that didn't make much difference to the people whose numbers they were.

"Yeah." Pierce nodded solemnly, then cast a glance around the suite. "Loren lost a shitload more, though. I think we put a major crimp on his plan… showed him we ain't gon' take that shit."

Iggy let out a slow breath, surveying the damaged room and looking out of the broken windows to the roof terrace beyond. The guys had obviously been busy cleaning up: there was a lot less broken glass around, and the bodies had been removed… except for a couple still on the terrace, and one that appeared to be floating in the rooftop pool. Iggy frowned as she watched two Saints trying to fish it out with a pool-cleaning net. It wasn't going well. Probably caught on something.

"Now'd be a good time to turn the screws on Loren," Pierce added, lowering his voice. "We won this one. I say we dig in here, start fuckin' things up for the Morningstar big time."

Iggy nodded. "Yeah. Let the crew get over this first, though. And make sure this place is locked down, in case Loren's people try to take it back. We're gonna need to fix up the mess… get a glazier, locksmith… uh, I think we're going to need a pool boy, too."

He followed her gaze to where the two Saints were still trying to get the corpse out of the water. "Huh. Yeah, there is that."

"Pierce, about the bodies…?"

"It's under control," he assured her, shaking his head. "Cleanup's a bitch on this one, but we got the team from Stilwater on board. This time tomorrow, everything's going to be done; nothing for anyone to trace to us. We'll get this place fixed up, make sure everything's clean… _then_ we can get to work."

"All right. Sounds good."

He smiled mirthlessly. "Yeah. Might calm Shaundi down a little bit, too. Hell, you'd think the chance to kill a whole bunch of Morningstar would have cheered her up."

Iggy raised an eyebrow. "Lemme guess. She's still pissed we don't have Loren?"

"Uh-huh."

"Ugh… me too, but come _on_…." Iggy shook her head wearily, but was distracted from any further complaint by movement on the other side of the lounge. "Uh, what the fuck…?"

A handful of girls in torn fishnets and dishevelled skimpy outfits, covered with borrowed Saints jackets, were sharing a beer near the wet bar. They looked like strippers. One had a line of butterfly stitches down the side of her forehead, and another had her arm in a sling.

Pierce grinned. "Ah. That's Ambra, Charmienne, Alice, and Sherry."

"Strippers?" Iggy enquired, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Hey! I didn't hire 'em. They came with the party. Ex-Morningstar girls… they suffered a little, uh, crisis of allegiance when they realised their employer was prepared to blow their asses up. Asked if they could stay. I said you'd decide."

Iggy groaned quietly. "We have strippers claiming asylum. Great."

Pierce gave her a reproachful look. "They've got information about Morningstar's operations. All the shit on the strip joints and sex clubs in town. That's useful, right? And Charmienne is a med student. Been helping us patch up the boys. She's the redhead," he added helpfully, nodding toward the girls.

"A med student," Iggy echoed dumbly. Well, that _was_ useful.

As if on cue, the girls turned to look in her direction, waving and smiling nervously. Iggy tried to pretend that all those long legs and garter belts weren't distracting, but she was too tired and too sore to do much more than notice them with passing approval.

"Did Legal get here yet?" she asked Pierce, nodding at the strippers.

"Yeah. Whole board'll be ready to talk in the morning. We got the information you wanted, we got maps, and we got _plans. _Don't worry, Boss. We're gonna get this shit fixed."

"Good." Iggy reached up and carefully started to unfasten her jacket. "In that case, I'm going to get changed and get some fucking sleep. We got hot water? Wait, don't answer that. Do I have a fucking _bed_?"

Pierce grinned. "Yes, and yes. C'mon. I'll show you."

Iggy followed him. The place was huge; corridors hung with paintings, rooms running off of rooms, and dual stairways leading up to a number of bedrooms.

"Fuck is this shit?" she asked, jerking a thumb at a particularly obnoxious canvas on the wall, which seemed to be nothing more than smears of pink and green paint.

"Looks like Loren's got a thing for modern art," Pierce said, shrugging. "Probably expensive."

Iggy wrinkled her nose. "Let's hock it. We need the money. Gotta do something about all the fucking pink in here anyway… remind me to get someone on that tomorrow. Just… hock _all _that shit. We got a good art guy?"

"Devon," Pierce said after a moment's thought, showing her into a large bedroom that only had a couple of bullet holes in the door. "He could probably do it. I'll call him. Here you go, Boss. All yours."

Iggy glanced appreciatively around the room. "Nice."

Everything was big, plush… comfortable. The walls were neutral, and the bed was the kind she could sink into and stay in for a week. She was vaguely aware of other shit, like a TV and a private bathroom, and more shitty artwork on the walls, but these observations didn't figure much next to the very appealing sight of the immense, soft bed.

"You want me to send the med student up?" Pierce asked innocently, raising his brows.

Iggy snorted. "I'm _tired_, you asshole… though I could use a hand with this." She stretched her arm tentatively, eyeing the tear in her jacket about an inch above her elbow. She hadn't looked at the wound yet, but she could feel dried blood gluing the sleeve to her skin.

"I'll see what I can do," Pierce said with a knowing grin, as he retreated back into the hallway.

Iggy kicked teasingly at his heels as he went and, with the door safely closed, she started to undress. Everything hurt, and every layer of clothing seemed to shed some shred of protection with it. By the time she'd peeled off her ruined jacket and got down to the Kevlar vest and neoprene elbow pads under her T-shirt, she felt vulnerable and weak. Filling the bathroom sink with hot water and sponging away the worst of the mess helped. The graze on her arm wasn't that bad: just a little nick in the flesh. She'd been fucking lucky, once again. It would heal. It would scar, but it would heal… and Iggy had plenty of scars.

She peered groggily at herself in the mirror—the whole bathroom was very sleek, very modern, all brushed aluminium and sharp angles, with soft lighting—and squinted at the small twin scars on her chin and upper lip. They'd faded over the years. Shit did. You bled, you healed, and you let the marks settle.

The bathroom cabinet had fuck all in it that was useful. Not even a band-aid, just q-tips and makeup. Made her kind of wonder who used this building, but the thoughts weren't that urgent.

Iggy grumbled to herself as she snatched up a towel and—at the sound of a soft knock on her new bedroom door—stomped over to find Pierce had indeed sent up the stripping med student who went by Charmienne. She was stunning: dark auburn hair and brown eyes, lightly tanned skin and curves so dangerous they should have had guard rails.

Iggy fought the urge to go downstairs and shoot Pierce in the nuts. Any other night—any other fucking night at all—and she'd have taken this opportunity with both hands, and then probably a variety of other ways too. Right now, even the thought exhausted her.

Charmienne smiled sweetly and held up a small first aid kit in a green box. "I'm running low on a few things, but I have Tylenol and antiseptic. You need me to look that over?"

Iggy glanced down at her arm. She still had her pants on, but she'd stripped the top half down to her bra. The other woman's very pretty eyes were lingering on her ink and, even through the fatigue, that did give Iggy a little kick of pride and, just maybe, the slightest twinge of interest.

Ah, fuck it. What the hell? She cracked a smile and jerked her head towards the room's opulent interior.

"Yeah… if you want to, _mija_. I can always stand a little medical attention."

##

###

##

* * *

Translations: (I'm having far too much fun doing "research" by reading blogs about swearing in Mexican Spanish; as ever, fluent speakers please feel free to correct me, because I have no idea how accurately I'm applying this stuff, though I'd like to believe I'm learning!)

_¡Pinche pendejo! _– damn/fucking asshole/moron (translation's pretty figurative here; I'm hoping my sources are good)

_¡Chinga!_ – fuck!

_¡No mames! ¿Qué coño hago ahora? _– No fucking way! What the fuck do I do now?

_Vamos nena… / ¡Pinche chingadera! _ - Come on, baby / Fucking thing!


	6. Chapter 6

**6. Gently Down the Stream**

* * *

Killbane had always scared Matt. It was a deep-seated, probably almost primeval response, and he didn't think it was at all unreasonable. To start with, the man was fucking _huge_, and Matt was… not. For most of his life he'd been getting the shit kicked out of him by people with big muscles, small brains, and whopping great inferiority complexes, and perhaps that did mean he automatically cringed in the presence of someone Eddie Pryor's size. It wasn't just that, though.

Yes, Killbane was massive, and yes, the attachment he had to his Luchadore mask was creepy at best, but it was nothing compared to how it actually felt to sit opposite him at the Syndicate boardroom table and look into his eyes. There was something about them that was… _off_, somehow.

As a matter of fact, Matt didn't like having to turn up for meetings at all, and not just because of Killbane. Being invited to discuss matters in Mr. Loren's private office was one thing, but the big boardroom—with its massive circular table, enormous and gaudy sculptures, tacky-vampire-club-red walls, and rather overdone marble-and-glass-with-red-and-pink-trim décor—felt like a performance, and in those circumstances Matt was always terrified he was going to forget his lines.

Oh, the _idea_ was appealing enough: sitting in fancy swivel chairs at a very dramatic table in an extremely opulent building, having subtly nuanced conversations that barely hinted at the massive power wielded by the tiny group of people in that room. It was all very James Bond. Unfortunately, in practice, it meant an annoying drive across town and an uncomfortable few hours spent in the presence of people who—when they were actually there in the flesh, rather than safely cordoned behind a web link—scared the shit out of him.

Mr. Loren always went full super-villain in that room, and the DeWynter twins weren't much better. Matt found them to be disturbingly calculating, albeit very intelligent and capable, but the way they played on being identical—from the matching clothes and makeup to the occasional finishing each other's sentences—got under his skin. They were unnerving… yet it was Killbane who truly frightened him.

He told himself it was silly; the man was a cartoon clown, a two-legged caricature of violence, and Loren had him on a tight leash. Still, it made the meetings uncomfortable.

Matt didn't care to admit it, but the reality of life as a member of the Syndicate was not as glamorous as he'd hoped. Like last year, just after he was recruited, when Mr. Loren had been travelling to Cairo and said he wanted to be sure there were no nasty surprises during his trip. Matt had thought he'd been officially invited.

For a whole three days, he'd thought he was really going to get an all-expenses-paid trip to Egypt—five-star hotel, VIP treatment of the kind accorded to filthy rich billionaire arms dealers—and what he ended up doing was sitting in front of a computer, combing through a mountain of surveillance and GPS data, working on a seven-hour time difference, and barely leaving his workstation for piss breaks. To be fair, he _had_ foiled an assassination attempt by MI6, but it wasn't as if Mr. Loren had been demonstrably grateful for it.

Of course, gratitude was hardly what Matt expected from this gig. He didn't need it. He didn't _want_ it, not really. What mattered was respect. Being part of the club—playing the game, even if it was by Loren's movie-star-villain rules—and reaping the rewards it brought. And _that_, Matt could do.

Naturally, he was under no illusions that, if he slipped up, Mr. Loren would have any compunction at all in having him killed… but that was part of the—well, not _fun_, exactly. Challenge? Yes. Something like that.

And so, there he was: sitting in a large, fancy leather chair, fiddling absently with his phone, and trying not to watch Killbane strike poses against the massive faux neo-classical sculptures that lined the room. The man's immense bulk had been poured into a dark grey silk suit somewhat at odds with his red-and-green mask—although complete with Luchadore green tie and Morningstar pink hankie crisply tucked into his breast pocket: the disturbing point at which "mobster businessman chic" met "unhinged sports fanatic"—and, horror of horrors, he'd been trying to make small talk with Matt while they waited for Loren and the DeWynters. Something about how all the sculptures of horses and centurions in this room recalled the motifs of Trajan's Column. Had Matt ever been to Rome? No? He ought to go; it was a city that understood history, and without history power was nothing. Matt nodded, smiled weakly, and made some small noises of non-committal agreement.

He was not looking forward to Mr. Loren's arrival. Not after what had happened with the penthouse.

The old man seemed to have taken the news relatively well when it happened—inasmuch as Matt had been able to relay anything useful beyond "_I don't know what happened but nothing went boom oh god what's going on_"—but his silence in the past twenty-four hours had been unsettling, and then there was this summons.

The Syndicate's board, as Loren liked to call this little group, usually met once a week. This meeting would, once he got here, convene two days earlier than normal, and Matt assumed it meant Mr. Loren had a plan for dealing with the Saints. He hoped so, anyway.

After everything that had been hitting the news—first the guard armoury job, then what the media was calling "a disturbance at a private party", closely followed by an "unrelated incident" in which a helicopter crashed into a warehouse roof—people were getting restless. The news had already picked up a couple of sightings of the Saints' Boss and her lieutenants in Steelport… reporting it, of course, as _celebrities_ paying a visit to the local soon-to-be-opening _Planet Saints_. Matt had been surprised Mr. Loren hadn't suggested going after the location; shooting up the store would have sent a message, but apparently that wasn't subtle enough for him.

Trouble was, after the past couple of days, Matt was pretty sure that "subtle" wasn't cutting it anymore.

Killbane flexed, striking a pose against one of the sculptures, his chin jutting out and those staring eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Matt suspected that, whatever the man was looking at, it was very different to what the rest of the world saw.

"It's all about the crown, Matty," he was saying… something about pride and power, and how true kings knew when to take control.

Matt hadn't really been listening. He winced. He hated the "Matty" thing. Hated the way Killbane's gravelly voice made it sound jovial and avuncular, even though it rang so very false that it made him want to take off his skin and scrub it clean from the inside.

"Y-Yes. Yes, I imagine it, um… is," he agreed lamely.

His phone spun faster in his fingers, his nervous fidgeting moving into compulsive tic territory. He'd prepared a selection of evidence from the penthouse's surveillance feeds to show Loren. The building was still a complete mess, and most of Matt's surveillance had been knocked out, but a few cameras were still working… the ones the Saints hadn't found yet. They'd destroyed the more obvious security cams, but most of Matt's bugs were extremely well hidden. It was just a shame there was little to nothing of use from them. The Saints were just camping out in the place, moving in vehicles and weaponry, so there'd been nothing worthwhile for him to spy on, but the very fact they seemed so relaxed had him worried.

"That's the problem with these people," Killbane drawled, smiling as he dropped his pose and began to move unhurriedly back to the table. "No sense of the _right_ way to do things. There's no honour to it."

He leaned on the wide, smooth surface—black marble with a red porphyry insert, and the Syndicate's five-pointed star inscribed on it, the outline limned with Morningstar pink—and gave Matt a long, hard look, his mouth still curled into the last half of that mirthless smile.

"What? Come on, Matty… you think these Saints are really going to be a problem?"

Christ, the mask was creepy. The way it covered everything but his eyes, the tip of his nose, and his mouth and chin…. Matt always caught himself wondering if there were horrific scars underneath or, rather, if Killbane _thought_ there were. Perhaps there was something about the face of Eddie Pryor that the man couldn't bear to admit was connected with him. Old memories, things he felt guilty for… who knew?

Matt blinked. That was a rather profound thought, but it had distracted him from the fact he should have said something. He cleared his throat, tapping a black-polished thumbnail against the back of his phone.

"I…. Well, I don't know. I-I don't—" The large double doors at the centre of the room opened, announcing Loren's arrival, flanked by the DeWynter sisters. Matt drew a breath and tried really hard not to sound tentative. "I just think that the Saints _aren't _going to back down."

He glanced at Mr. Loren. Oh god, he was wearing the eye patch today. An actual eye patch. He'd gone full super villain, definitely. This couldn't bode well.

Killbane smiled broadly, though his eyes glittered like wet rocks: dead and a little bit dangerous. "Matty… there's nothing to worry about!"

Matt tried to suppress the urge to squirm in his seat. He usually got the feeling no one was listening to him but, _usually_, it didn't matter. He could just carry on with what he did best—secure in the knowledge that the rest of the Syndicate could barely tell one end of a coaxial cable from the other and wouldn't question him—and let them handle the strategic business.

This time, something felt different. Something _was_ different.

Loren already had a cigarette smouldering in his fingers. He normally did. He put it to his lips, and Matt was grateful for the flow of the semi-arctic air conditioning in the boardroom, because at least it prevented the smoke spooling around Loren's head from making everything smell like an ashtray.

The DeWynters—moving in unison so perfect it might have been choreographed, and _there_ was another creepy thought—peeled off behind him and took their respective seats, while Loren moved to his own wingback chair, pausing to draw a shiny black glass ashtray within reach before he sat down.

"My thoughts exactly, Mr. Killbane," he said, tapping the ash off his cigarette but not bothering with even the curtest of good mornings. He looked up, his gaze moving briefly over Matt with a coolness that felt slightly threatening. "The Saints are no more than a white noise of empty threats."

Matt bit his tongue. They'd defused the bomb. The Boss had chased Anton halfway across the city in a fucking helicopter—they were still waiting to get his body back from the morgue, but the inside man the Morningstar had at the coroner's office said it was a point-blank shot in the forehead, plus a few broken ribs and minor injuries. Matt wasn't even sure what the final death toll from the penthouse disaster was going to be, or how much it had pissed off the Morningstar's clients—the ones who were still alive, anyway—but, with the Saints now holding ground right in the middle of the downtown district, he didn't see how Loren could still be so dismissive. If that was white noise, it was pretty bloody deafening.

Loren drew on his cigarette. "They have had their little burst of excitement, they have made a mess. What do they do now, hm? Do you really think they can touch us in any significant way? The Saints have over-extended themselves. They will soon learn by just how much."

Killbane let loose a soft chuckle, like the dry rustle of paper. The DeWynters just sat there looking imperious and impassive, and Matt chewed the inside of his lip, still turning his phone over in his fingers. He pulled up the feed clips he'd compiled, unmuted the video and set it to run before he slid the phone across the table, shooting it towards Loren. Damn it, _someone_ needed to start listening to him.

"They were better organised than we expected," he said, as the sound of gunfire, breaking glass, and screaming erupted from the video. "The trap might have been sprung, but it didn't catch anything… I-I really think y— er, _we_, underestimated them."

He blinked nervously as Kiki gave him an icy glare. Viola was peering at the video over Loren's shoulder. Matt knew it by heart; he should have done, the number of times he'd gone through it. The way the Saints' leader had made straight for her targets—the computer in the office, the elevator codes—and the calm savagery with which she'd picked people off. It was eerie. And the thing with the helicopter…! That hadn't exactly been "calm", but he had to give the woman credit for having a great big pair of brass balls.

Matt cleared his throat as the video ran to its conclusion, the sound of departing rotor blades whirring under the yells and shooting from the penthouse. "Whether or not they had help from inside, sir, I'd say… with the utmost respect… 'empty' is no longer applicable."

Loren glanced up sharply, glaring at him. The temperature of the room seemed to drop by several degrees, and Matt shifted awkwardly in his seat. His phone came skimming back across the table towards him, and he caught it gratefully, somehow feeling much better once he had it in his hand again.

"It is of no consequence," Mr. Loren said firmly. "They are nothing more than a minor inconvenience. A small obstacle. An annoyance. It will pass soon enough—they do not have the capacity to take on a united front. And we _are_ united, are we not?"

Matt nodded glumly. "Of course."

He wanted to add a "but…", although he knew better than that, so he kept quiet. All the same, Loren's attitude annoyed him. How stupid could people be? He didn't even know if it was denial or flat-out arrogance, but either way it seemed ridiculous… unless the old man had another contingency plan. He probably did, Matt supposed. Mr. Loren never went into a room without knowing four ways to get out of it.

Killbane was off on one again—the strongest part of an army was its unification; the Saints' undisciplined chaos would bring them down; they'd all get the same as Johnny Gat—and Matt disliked the gloating. It seemed like tempting fate… not to mention the fact it reminded him that Gat's body was apparently somewhere in this building. _That_ was just another element of creepy. What did Loren plan on doing with it? Stuffing him and using him as a coffee table? Ugh.

As the conversation turned to facts, figures, the details of operations—number-crunching, profit margins, Kiki's interminable PowerPoint presentations—and the minutiae of what changes, in the wake of the Saints' arrival in Steelport, would be made to the way on-the-ground representation was handled, Matt began to read between the lines.

Mr. Loren wanted things tightened up. Shipments would now be moved by teams with more intensive security. The new assault rifles—the same as the ones the Morningstar had recently sold via government contract—would be dispatched to operatives, and a zero-tolerance policy was to taken regarding the Saints. Anyone seen to be a member of their crew would meet with trouble of the most terminal nature and, as regarded the possibility someone within the Syndicate had leaked information, _that_ was also a matter which, if proven, would be dealt with using extreme prejudice.

Matt leaned back in his chair, staying quiet for the most part. Perhaps Loren was taking it all more seriously than he'd first thought. He had his orders, anyway—keeping an eye on the Saints' movements, and making life difficult for them. _That_ would be easy enough. He could start by getting into the energy company's system and causing a few glitches; shut off the power to the penthouse, mess up whatever he could access. Easy. Probably not enough, but a start.

"—the program isn't ready, though," Viola was saying, looking concerned. "They're barely anything more than animals at this point. I don't even know if—"

Loren turned down the corners of his mouth, shaking his head. "It is of no matter. We merely deploy animals to hunt animals, hm? A few encounters with Mr. Kirrlov's progeny, and I am sure the Saints will rethink the wisdom of their actions."

Matt said nothing. He'd seen the files regarding the "project" the Morningstar kept hidden away… god, _that_ was in the labs under this building, too, wasn't it? Oh, yuck. He wanted to shudder, but settled for burrowing a little deeper into the broad collar of his jacket. Human cloning—if you could call the things that they'd made human. He stayed out of it, and gladly. It wasn't his responsibility. All he had to do was manage the server farms and computer networks that kept the lab quietly powered, and arrange—when required—for certain pieces of medical or scientific equipment to "appear". Fortunately, the Deckers had a shell company that dealt with biomedical research, so that wasn't a problem… and didn't need Matt to think too deeply about it, which was just the way he preferred certain things.

He turned his phone over in his fingers again, worrying at the edge of the case with his thumbnail. If Loren was prepared to let the brutes out, he must be more worried than he was letting on, and _that _meant Matt was probably right about this whole mess.

It was time to move Agent Kensington again.

_**~o~O~o~**_

Matt drove straight back to Burns Hill after the meeting, still fuming with quiet irritation. Rolling the windows of his Criminal down and blasting aggrotech at the unsuspecting pedestrians helped a bit, but didn't eradicate his frustrations entirely. He was just hitting the Stanfield Tunnel when his phone rang.

"Yeah?"

"_Matt." _Kirsten's voice was urgent, terse—no playful preamble. _"I got Saints moving. They just hit a Morningstar warehouse north of the park, made off with a shitload of coke. I think they're trying to tell us they're not leaving."_

The fluorescent amber glow of the tunnel's lights bounced off the dash, and Matt cursed under his breath.

"_You want me to do anything? Tip off the cops, or—?"_

"No. Not yet." Matt glared at the little green Emu he was currently stuck behind, unconscionably tempted to just try driving over the bloody thing. "Leave it. Give them some space and let's see what they do next. It's not like they're going to launch a full-out assault on the Syndicate Tower."

"_You hope," _Kirsten supplemented dryly.

He scoffed. "Yeah, right…. Listen, I want you to start monitoring the _Planet Saints_ store, too. Anywhere they're likely to be. Anything good off the penthouse feeds yet?"

Kirsten heaved a theatrical groan. _"No. Boo-ooring. I've been watching all morning and all I've seen is three glaziers, a bunch of builders, and a pool boy go in. I swear, it's like the start to a bad porno. Nothing doing inside—don't know where the crazy chola bitch is. Are you coming back here?"_

"In a bit. I'm heading to the Parkview farm," Matt said, finally watching the accursed Emu move forward. "Yes! Go on, bloody _go_… ugh! I, er, I want to move Kensington. Just in case. Can you give Jax a heads-up I'm coming?"

"_Sure thing, oh glorious leader,"_ she deadpanned. _"You have any dry-cleaning to pick up while I'm at it?"_

Matt smirked. "Well, actually—"

"_Fuck you. I'll see you later."_

He grinned. "All right."

_**~o~O~o~**_

The thing about heading a gang of hackers was that, by their nature, most of the Deckers were solitary types. They didn't fit in with the mainstream, and plenty of them could be prickly at the best of times. There were certain elements of the crew who hung around mostly for the parties and the cachet of being gangbangers without the actual likelihood of terribly regular violence, just as there were those who used their affiliation as an excuse to pick fights.

They were a diverse bunch and, broadly speaking, it was like herding cats. Matt often envied the organisation that the Morningstar had—all those rank and file members, paid to do the dirty work—or the ease with which Killbane's Luchadore idiots would accept orders. Every time _he_ asked someone to do something, it was "Why?" or "Do I have to?" or "Not unless you pay me". It was enough to give a man a complex.

One of the few exceptions to this rule was Jax. Matt liked Jax. He was trustworthy, and he cared about the things the Deckers stood for. He _understood_, although he was a little prone to taking the extreme option to solving any given problem. It had taken a long time to convince him that they didn't need to kill Kensington, for a start—and even longer after Matt had put him in charge of guarding her. Mind you, she had that effect on a lot of people.

He parked the Criminal a little way down from the small industrial complex that lay at the point Burns Hill's suburbs faded into concrete and grey pre-fab, and walked to the non-descript-looking building on the corner. But for the dark blue sedan with tinted windows parked outside, and the couple of Deckers lounging in the parking lot—both in heavy black cargos and dark cybergoth tops, flagging only a little blue in their clothing—it would have been hard to know there was anything of note here.

Matt nodded to them, and waited while they unlocked the door. Inside, the place was dark and cool, the rooms gutted out and filled with server banks. The Deckers had several server farms like this dotted around Stanfield, and one or two on the other side of the river. It made sense to Matt not to keep all their proverbial eggs in the same basket, just in case anything ever went down at the reactor. Funny, but when he'd thought about it, he'd been planning for cyber attacks or fed raids. He _really_ hoped he wasn't going to have to deal with the Saints. There was a strong possibility most of the Deckers who hung out at the reactor would… well, not come out of that fight intact, he thought, quickly pushing the possibility from his head. Ridiculous, really. It was the Morningstar who'd drawn their attention for now, and if Mr. Loren was setting his science project loose on the city, _that_ should certainly keep them occupied.

Matt padded past the row of machines, comforted by the humming that emanated from the rows of black and grey boxes with their bundled loops of cables and gently flashing lights. He felt comfortable here. There was complexity, but also order… a living, growing nest of information, data pouring in and out like sand, flowing second after second.

"Matt. Kirsten said you were coming."

Jax met him at the door to the small apartment at the back of the building—just enough to keep the people who took care of the location comfortable—arms folded across his chest, and a sour scowl fixed to his face. He was taller than Matt, with his flattop hair bleached to platinum blonde and his eyes outlined in turquoise, which formed quite a contrast to the darkness of his skin. Jax favoured a cybergoth look heavy on dark colours and manmade fibres, though there were a few flashes of Decker blue on his clothes. Over the time they'd known each other, Matt had done a little kenjutsu sparring with him, and was aware of just how good he was with a katana, though the only weapons Jax wore right now were a hunting knife and a stun gun on his thick, heavy belt.

"I think we should move our friend," Matt said by way of greeting, slightly worried by that scowl.

Jax curled his lip. "Can we move her six feet under the ground? Look what that bitch did. Bit me."

He unfolded his arms, showing a bandage on his left hand, cotton wadding bound between his forefinger and thumb. Matt winced.

"What happened?"

"She tried to get out. Tried to get my taser and make a fucking break for it. Didn't get far but, shit, she's got teeth."

"We're not killing her," Matt said, at which Jax pouted sulkily. "We're not! She's still useful… besides, it would be bad if it got traced back to us. Killing a fed."

"Ex-fed," Jax pointed out. "Technically, she's a treasonous fugitive. And they'd only tie it to us if they found the body. Maybe not even then. Anyway, I thought the Syndicate handled that shit. Or has your sugar daddy not got our asses covered after all?"

It was Matt's turn to scowl at that remark. "Loren's got everything locked down just fine, but I don't think he'd thank me for giving him that kind of shit to deal with. Now are you going to stand there bitching like a little girl all day, or can I go in?"

Jax narrowed his blue-rimmed eyes, and Matt met his glare head-on.

"Fine. Where d'you want Ginger taken, anyway?"

"Not sure yet." Matt paused, one hand on the door handle. "I was thinking about the barge. We can move it all downriver if the city starts getting hot, and no one'll be able to track it."

"And she might fall overboard and drown," Jax added, brightening considerably. "I like how you think, Boss."

Matt scoffed, the smile he'd started to crack stiffening and dying on his lips. _Boss_. Nobody ever called him that unless they were being facetious. Jax unhooked the stun gun from his belt and passed it over.

"Here. Just in case."

Matt was going to decline the offer… but that really was a very large bandage, and he knew what Kensington could be like. He took the taser, shoved it into his pocket and, opening the door, slipped into the apartment, heading for the room at the back which he liked to mentally refer to as the guest suite. It was small, but—like the rest of the rooms—not uncomfortable. The entire apartment rather resembled an economy travel lodge, although the alternative possibilities could have been much worse.

Really, it was one of the nicest accommodations a captive FBI agent—oh, right, _former_ FBI agent—could hope to find herself in. The only things missing were windows and, of course, access to the outside world. Kinzie had unfortunately already proven to be too much a menace when she was allowed that.

"Good afternoon, Agent Kensington," Matt said brightly as he let himself into the room, smiling widely. "And how are we today?"

At the sound of his voice, the slumped figure shackled to the padded chair in the centre of the beige carpet raised her head. Her coppery hair was lank, pinned back in a dishevelled ponytail, and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. Her jeans and grey hoodie were rumpled, but fairly clean: Matt had prided himself on the fact the Decker weren't monsters. She had access to a small bathroom, albeit supervised access—they weren't _stupid_, either—and she was provided with clean clothes, maybe even the occasional newspaper. It should have been a fairly tolerable captivity, really. Shame she couldn't be civilised about it.

"_Miller_!" Kinzie snarled, trying to lunge out of the chair she was attached to. Her arms were pinned behind the back of the seat—a pair of handcuffs that jangled as she moved—and though her legs were free, the chair itself had been bolted to the floor. All she succeeded in doing was spitting out a mouthful of swearwords and jolting herself against her bonds, then flopping back into the seat while she gave him death-ray eyes.

Matt grinned and leaned nonchalantly against the door. He rarely had the opportunity to feel so fucking powerful in physical space. There was something profoundly pleasing in just standing there, watching the woman who had come dangerously close to shutting him down get herself so frustrated that it looked like she might either cry or have a seizure.

"_Tsk, tsk,_ Agent Kensington. Really." He shook his head, tutting gently as Kinzie swore, for about the third time, that she was going to kill him… slowly, with a pencil, apparently. Goodness, but she was creative when she was angry. Matt raised an eyebrow. "I thought you _liked_ handcuffs."

Kinzie stopped, and just gave him the most solemn look of pure, unfiltered hatred that he'd ever seen on anyone. It made the air in the beige, stuffy little room positively crackle. She looked as if she was going to say something, but her mouth just hung partly open, and she continued to glower at him with unflinching ire. Matt's smile grew ever wider. He ought to make a point of coming to see her more often, he thought. After all, she was one of the very few people on the planet who almost understood him.

"I'm going to kill you," Kinzie said quietly. It wasn't an outraged yell of a threat this time; it sounded almost sweet, like a little promise she was making to herself. "I _am_. I am going to kill you."

Matt smirked and made a show of inspecting his black-polished nails. "Quite a trick if you can do it from there, love. No… I just thought you'd like to know that you're going on a little trip soon. Change of scene. You'll like that, won't you?"

She narrowed her hazel eyes until they were just glinting slits of hatred behind her thick-framed glasses. "What the fuck?"

He tucked his hands into his pockets, secretly glad to be able to close his fingers around the taser, just in case. Kinzie looked seriously pissed off. Matt shrugged.

"Oh, you know how it is. Things change. And I thought maybe you were getting bored with this little room. You might like to see the world."

She winced, then curled her lips back. "Look, if you're going to kill me, why don't you just do it?"

Matt grinned, tilting his head to the side to give her a long, teasing look. "My dear _Agent_ Kensington… whyever would I do that? You're much more interesting alive. At the moment. Besides, I don't think I've found all your little breadcrumbs yet. I know you left them. You tried so hard, didn't you? So very hard to make people see. Shame they didn't believe you."

She gritted her teeth, her shoulders tensing as she seemed tempted to tug on the restraints again. If he'd moved closer, Matt was in no doubt she'd have been trying to shatter his kneecaps. The sheer weight of pent-up rage and frustration rolling off the woman was staggering—forget knife, the atmosphere would have needed a chainsaw to cut it—and he really _did _find that entertaining.

It wiped the entirety of the morning's meeting, and everything to do with Killbane, right out of Matt's mind. For now, anyway.

He smiled lazily, enjoying her struggles. "Ooh, I meant to say. You'll be pleased to know I found the keylogger you tried to plant in the DeWynters' system. Very naughty of you, trying to crack open the membership list for _Safeword_. What was the matter? Didn't they comp you for the VIP parties?"

As a matter of fact, weeding out all the damage and inconvenience Kensington had caused before he'd been forced to take her down had cost Matt a considerable amount of time and effort. He would never have allowed her to believe that, naturally… but he was enjoying the gloating far more than he ought.

"I suppose Kiki and Viola thought you weren't quite—hmm, I don't know—up to the job?"

Kinzie let out a strangled cry of rage and fought against the handcuffs. Matt closed his finger on the taser in his pocket, just in case. She looked _really_ ticked off… probably still not over all those photos from her so-called "secret" online profiles being forwarded to her bosses, along with the video of her flogging some guy at a play party. Matt didn't really see the appeal of all that S&M stuff, though some of the outfits were impressive. Still, he would have thought someone so used to dishing out pain and humiliation would have been a bit better at taking it.

He crouched down a little, bringing himself on a level with her eyeline, though still well out of striking distance.

"Aww, what's the matter? Poor widdle Agent Kensington not as good as she thought she was? So sad. Never mind," he added, straightening up before she had the chance to hock one in his eye. "You'll have plenty of time to think about all the things you could have done better while you're settling in to your new place. If you're really lucky, maybe I'll give you some pointers. Show you how a _real_ cyber god does things."

Matt let himself out of the room again as Kinzie gave vent to an expletive-laden yell of rage. He slipped back out of the apartment and into the gentle hum of the servers' whispering. Jax was leaning against the wall, waiting for him.

"You get anything out of her?"

Matt shrugged. "She's not going to tell us everything she did. Not yet. Doesn't matter—we've recovered enough of her hard drive to put most of it together, and she'll spill the rest eventually. I just like knowing where she is. It's safer that way."

Jax gave him a strange look for a moment, but said nothing. Matt tossed the taser back to him and made a show of looking for his car keys.

"I'll, uh, I'll let you know when the barge is ready. Probably two nights' time, no more than that. I don't want to leave it much longer."

"Sure."

"Right, then."

Matt cleared his throat, and let himself out of the building, squinting a bit in the daylight. One step at a time, he reminded himself. Take everything steadily, and don't panic.

After all, it wasn't as if the Saints were going to cause _that_ much mess in Steelport, let alone start screwing up _his_ enterprises. All the same… it was probably better to be forearmed than forewarned.

He needed to get back to the reactor, and start hunting for his own trail of breadcrumbs.


End file.
